Sitting of 22 December 1976

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS
  ANGLIAN WATER AUTHORITY BILL [Lords] (By Order)
  Read a Second time and committed.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

    Spain
    Mr. David Huntasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to visit Madrid.
    The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Dr. David Owen): None, Sir.
    Mr. Hunt: In advance of his plans to visit Madrid, will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House the attitude of Her Majesty's Government to Spain becoming a member of the European Community?
    Dr. Owen: Any application which might be made by the Spanish Government would be to the Community as a whole, and Her Majesty's Government would be only one of the members of the Nine to take a view of it. It is normal practice to consult amongst the Nine before reaching a conclusion on any application. But, clearly, Her Majesty's Government's attitude would be conditioned by the sort of changes towards democracy which are now beginning to occur in Spain and which we welcome.
    Mr. Hurd: Have not the King, the Government and the people of Spain made remarkably fast progress in the last year or so towards building a parliamentary democracy, and at this particularly difficult
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    time would it not be right for us to send out from this House a message of our congratulations and good wishes?
    Dr. Owen: The course to be followed by Spain is a matter for the Spanish people themselves without outside interference. It is very much to be hoped that they will soon have a genuinely democratic system of government. But it is for them to decide these matters.
    Mr. MacFarquhar: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that, although we welcome the changes which have occurred since the death of Franco, Her Majesty's Government should not take any steps within the European Community to encourage Spanish membership until there have been full democratic elections in that country?
    Dr. Owen: I agree with my hon. Friend.

    United States of America
    Mr. Formanasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will pay an official visit to Washington DC.
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Anthony Crosland): I have no current plans to visit Washington, but I look forward to a further meeting with the Secretary of State-designate at an early opportunity.
    Mr. Forman: When the Foreign Secretary or his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has an opportunity to pay a visit to Washington or to have consultations with members of the American Government in London, will he make it a high priority to discuss and pursue with the American Government the question of nuclear proliferation? Further, will he reassure the American Government that Her Majesty's Government will give the fullest support to what we believe will be President Carter's efforts to raise this question, to take it further and to see whether we cannot tighten up on the international safeguards which every sensible person wants?
    Mr. Crosland: The answer to both questions is in the affirmative. The question of nuclear proliferation played a very substantial part in the United States presidential campaign, and it has been made clear already that the Carter

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    Administration will be giving high priority to this question. That is a matter which we wholeheartedly welcome.
    Mr. Thorpe: Does the Foreign Secretary agree that one priority which we should discuss with the Americans is the early reconvening of the North-South Conference, which has been postponed? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, just as Sheikh Yamani has shown some initiative and leadership in trying to keep down the ever-escalating price of oil, we likewise have a responsibility to see whether some long-term agreement can be made for writing off the debts of the Third World?
    Mr. Crosland: The two co-chairmen of the CIEC are at the moment consulting the participant members to try to agree on a renewed date, the conference having been postponed from mid-December, and we shall fit in with any date which is convenient. But it is very hard to fix a date until the new Administration has taken over in the United States. Clearly, talks without them would be counter-productive. When the CIEC reconvenes, however, the West as a whole and not simply this country will need to take a very much more coherent view than it has done so far on what it is prepared to do about debt and the various other questions which have come up in the last 12 months.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: Will my right hon. Friend discuss with the American Government the ways in which a mandatory arms embargo can be applied to South Africa, since the efforts of the British Government to have an embargo have been frustrated by other countries simply filling the vacuum caused by that policy?
    Mr. Crosland: It is very important to tighten up wherever we can the United Nations arms embargo which exists already and in which the British Government have participated. I have no evidence that the United States Government are prominent in trying to break this embargo. If my hon. Friend has any evidence, I should be glad if he would send it to me.

    New Hebrides
    Mr. Christopher Priceasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
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    Affairs when he next expects to visit the Condominium of the New Hebrides.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Evan Luard): My right hon. Friend has no present plans to do so.
    Mr. Price: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very important for Britain to reassure the National Party in the New Hebrides, which looks to Britain for protection, about complex electoral machinery which has given it the majority of votes but denied it the majority of seats and that the system is not simply rigged against it? Is my hon. Friend aware that when independence comes it should be genuine and not subject to the economic domination of the French, who are in the South Pacific, in French Polynesia and New Caledonia, only for nuclear motives? Can my hon. Friend give any target date for independence?
    Mr. Luard: The National Party is the largest single party in the new Assembly. Therefore, there is no doubt that it will play a dominant part in framing proposals for constitutional advance in the New Hebrides. On the second point, there is no question that independence in the New Hebrides will provide a specially privileged place for any particular Power, European or otherwise. So far, no date has been set for independence.
    Mr. Thorpe: Will the Minister go further and reject this monstrous attack by his hon. Friend on the Westminster electoral system, which is well known and well tried and is guaranteed to ensure that minority interests are represented, and nearly always ensures that the minority are returned as the Government of the day?
    Mr. Luard: I refrain from commenting on the way in which our electoral system operates for the Liberal Party. Let me make clear, however, that the National Party secured the largest number of votes in the election and that it is the largest single party represented in the Assembly.
    Mr. Newens: Has my hon. Friend studied the plans which have been made to deal with defects in the system for registering voters, with the failure to take

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    action to put an end to an illegal radio station, and with violence and intimidation? Will he seek to consult the French authorities to make sure that there are no attempts to frustrate democracy or to cultivate separatist tendencies for purely unnecessary ends?
    Mr. Luard: As my hon. Friend knows, there were a small number of incidents in the recent elections, and in one or two cases special by-elections were held to remedy the situation. Given that the country is not yet fully accustomed to the democratic system, I believe that the elections were held with a considerable degree of success and public participation.

    Rhodesia
    Mr. Wallasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the Geneva Conference.
    Mr. Brocklebank-Fowlerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Rhodesia.
    Mr. Brothertonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about progress at the Geneva talks on Rhodesia.
    Mr. Crosland: I refer the hon. Members to my statement on Rhodesia of 14th December.
    Mr. Wall: Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the problem now is the transfer of power not so much from white hands to black but from white hands to non-Marxist black? Does he agree that failure here will mean that Rhodesia will follow the fate of Angola and Mozambique? Will he comment on the recent massacre by guerrilla forces on the Mozambique border?
    Mr. Crosland: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's interpretation in the first part of the question, which gives a totally inaccurate view of how matters stand and will stand in the forthcoming talks in Southern Africa. On his second point, clearly there have been atrocities on both sides with an escalation of the guerrilla war, as most people foresaw there would be. We in the Government strongly deplore any atrocities, whoever commits them, but the plain fact is that all this
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    will continue until a settlement is reached.
    Mr. Brotherton: In view of the recent disgusting atrocity, will the Foreign Secretary tell Mr. Ivor Richard when he starts his tour of Africa that no aid will be given to any of the five front-line countries until those countries, particularly Mozambique, stop giving aid and succour to these murdering guerrillas?
    Mr. Crosland: I do not think that it would be a very productive exercise. Accusations of atrocities have been made on both sides. I will not go into them because we have no means of verifying whether they are correct. Atrocities are deplorable, and everyone accepts that, but I have no doubt, as we have discovered in other cases nearer to our borders, that where a civil war of this kind occurs it will be an unpleasant and disagreeable affair.
    Mr. James Lamond: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind, in view of the Government's public expenditure cuts, that it is not desirable for them to spend vast sums compensating white Rhodesians who, after 10 years of supporting the illegal régime, may now feel that it is time to abandon their property in Rhodesia?
    Mr. Crosland: The Government have no intention whatever of offering compensation to people for leaving Rhodesia.
    Mr. John Davies: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the prime objective of the Geneva Conference must be to find a means of ensuring an orderly interim Government pending the advent of majority rule? Will he assure the House that after Mr. Ivor Richard's visit to the United States and subsequently to Africa the Government will be taking a positive line in the Geneva Conference and will be seeking very hard to use their influence to achieve a right and just settlement?
    Mr. Crosland: Yes, I can give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance. Mr. Richard has already been to discuss these matters in New York with Dr. Kissinger and others, and he will be going to Southern Africa armed with very positive proposals from our side. When the conference reconvenes in Geneva, we certainly propose to play as positive and constructive a rôle as we possibly can.

    South Africa
    Mr. Tim Rentonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next expects to have a meeting with the Foreign Affairs Minister of South Africa.
    The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Edward Rowlands): My right hon. Friend has at present no plans for such a meeting.
    Mr. Renton: Bearing in mind the extent to which developments in Rhodesia will inevitably impinge on South Africa, would it not be advisable for such a meeting to be held in the near future? To what extent does the Minister now regard the end of separate development in South Africa as inevitable? Over what time scale will that be? What effect does he think that will have on Britain's supply of vital raw materials?
    Mr. Rowlands: On the first part of the question, we are in consultation with South Africa, and when Mr. Richard undertakes his shuttle during the Christmas Recess I think that there will be further consultations with the South African Government about Rhodesia. It is difficult at the moment to forecast the impact of the end of separate development on the South African economy or on the international economy. There seems to be no reason to suppose that the South Africans will have a change of heart on this issue.
    Mr. Hooley: If the Minister meets the Foreign Secretary of South Africa, will he make clear that the United Kingdom completely stands by the resolution of the United Nations Security Council of 13th January this year and that we shall have nothing to do with any puppet régime set up in Namibia by the South African authorities?
    Mr. Rowlands: Our views on Namibia are clearly expressed in the United Nations and in other international fora. We cannot support certain recent resolutions on this subject because of their extreme features, but that does not mean that we would support a puppet régime in Namibia.
    Mr. Rifkind: Given the Government's refusal to accept that the Transkei is no longer a part of South Africa, will the
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    Minister indicate how British interests are represented there?
    Mr. Rowlands: They are not represented there because we do not recognise it to be an independent sovereign State.

    France
    Mr. Martenasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he will next meet the French Foreign Minister.
    Dr. Owen: My right hon. Friend next expects to meet the French Foreign Minister at the European Economic Community Council of Ministers meeting on 18th January.
    Mr. Marten: I wish the Foreign Secretary the best of British luck during his chairmanship of the Council of Ministers. May I suggest that he might think of getting together with our French friends and giving a clear lead to saying that the British and French want neither more centralisation in the Common Market nor any step taken which would lead us down the road to a federal State? If he did that, it would not only be a very good move but would be very popular in this country.
    Dr. Owen: The hon. Gentleman has his well-known views on the European Community. The issues that he raises concerning centralisation and a federal State have been discussed many times. It is possible to be a strong supporter of the European Community, as I am, and a strong believer in decentralisation, which I also am.
    Mr. Newens: When my right hon. Friend next meets the French Foreign Secretary, will he raise with him the question of securing full co-operation on our policy of refusing to supply arms to South Africa?
    Dr. Owen: Her Majesty's Government's views on the supply of arms to South Africa are well known, as are the views of the French Government. These subjects can be raised in normal bilateral discussions, but I do not think that there is any doubt among the French Government of our views on this issue. We continue to espouse our cause and argue it where appropriate.
    Mr. Adley: As is predictable, the American anti-Concorde industry is

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    hotting up its activities in anticipation of the forthcoming hearings in New York. Will the right hon. Gentleman communicate to his French colleagues the vital importance of the British and French Governments remaining in the closest possible contact and co-ordinating their policy on Concorde in the representations they will shortly have to make to the incoming American Government?
    Dr. Owen: Yes, but there is already very close co-ordination.

    Argentina
    Mr. George Rodgersasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on relations between the United Kingdom and the Argentine.
    Mr. Rowlands: Relations with Argentina are normal.
    Mr. Rodgers: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is widespread concern about the reported ill treatment of religious and politically concerned groups in Argentina? Will he tell the House of any representations that have been made to the Argentine Government and whether any United Kingdom citizens have been involved?
    Mr. Rowlands: In recent months there have been a number of individual British citizens affected in one way or another. We have made every representation to the Argentine Government in individual British cases. As for the general position in Argentina, obviously the Argentine Government will be fully aware of the widespread international concern, which might, for example, have affected some of the decisions and actions that they have taken in respect of the Jehovah's Witnesses, a matter on which we have received a large number of letters from Members on both sides of the House. We have no direct locus. I understand that there is no individual British citizen involved in the case of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
    Mr. Flannery: Does my hon. Friend accept that Argentina is seen by a large number of refugees from other countries in the South American orbit as a place of refuge, only to arrive there and, as in the case of the Whitelaw family, who were British nationals, to be murdered
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    by some maverick Right-wing band? Will he therefore make every attempt to try to ensure that refugees from that country who apply to this country are given some sort of precedence to get them here in safety?
    Mr. Rowlands: I think that our record on political refugees from South America stands any comparison and is comparable with that of any other nation. We have done our best to help political refugees from South America.

    Belize
    Mr. Durantasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress has been made in the British Government's negotiations with Guatemala over the State of Belize.
    Mr. Rowlands: Five meetings have been held this year in the current negotiations with Guatemala on the future of Belize, two of them at ministerial level. British proposals for a settlement have been discussed but some fundamental issues have yet to be resolved.
    Mr. Durant: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Belizeans wish to keep our presence in the country until there is a just settlement? Is he further aware that our forces in Belize are doing a magnificent job for us that is not realised in this country? Further, what is happening about a Belizean defence force of their own?
    Mr. Rowlands: I am sure that everyone would wish to be associated with the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the rôle, function and part that the British forces are playing in Belize. I am happy to say that in principle we support the development of a defence force, and the Premier, Mr. Price, has been so informed.
    Mr. Luce: In the light of the overwhelming support for Britain's policy for Belize at the United Nations, will the hon. Gentleman convey to Guatemala that international opinion expects it to co-operate with Britain in reaching an early and honourable settlement—in fact, a settlement that responds to the overwhelming wishes of the Belizeans?
    Mr. Rowlands: I am sure that the Guatemalan Government are more than conscious of the international support for Belizean aspirations for independence.

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    The negotiations that I have been conducting over the past 12 months are at a delicate stage. We hope to achieve an early negotiated settlement with Guatemala on this 150-year-old problem.

    Chile
    Mr. McCrindleasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he is now prepared to reappoint an ambassador in Santiago.
    Mr. Rowlands: My right hon. Friend continues to keep this matter under review in the light of our relations with Chile.
    Mr. McCrindle: But is it not just possible that certain changes are overtaking the regime in Chile and that it would be wise for this country to be fully represented so that those changes can be properly assessed? Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that we cannot for ever govern our relations with this important Latin American country on the basis of the prejudice of some of his hon. Friends?
    Mr. Rowlands: Our relations with Chile have not been based on the prejudice of any Members. The withdrawal of our ambassador from Chile, which received support from both sides of the House, as the House will recall, took place in circumstances which the House understood as a result of the circumstances that arose in the case of Dr. Cassidy. There have been releases of political prisoners, which we welcome, but there are still many more detained for basically political offences. We see no change at present in the basic nature of the regime to indicate that we should modify our policy.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: Is my hon. Friend aware that concern has recently been expressed about the slowness of admission of refugees from Chile to this country? As visas are a matter for the Home Office—at least, that is the case with entry certificates—will he discuss the matter with the Home Office to ensure that there is no hold-up or delay?
    Mr. Rowlands: We have regular discussions with the Home Office about visas and entry certificates for refugees from Chile, as from other parts of South America, and we have done our best to speed up the processes.
    Mr. Tapsell: Will the hon. Gentleman explain whether Her Majesty's Government still support the traditional criteria for the granting of diplomatic recognition—namely, the claiming of an advantage rather than the conferment of a compliment? If that is so, will he explain why it is that in Chile, where we have some thousands of British subjects who may at some time require the protection of a British mission, we have broken off diplomatic relations whereas, by contrast, in Cambodia, the scene of one of the greatest acts of genocide, running to perhaps 800,000 people murdered in recent months, we have established relations? What is the logic either in morality or in practicality behind such a policy?
    Mr. Rowlands: We have not broken off diplomatic relations with the Chilean Government. We have diplomatic relations. We withdrew our ambassador because of a distasteful, dislikeable and terrible incident involving a British citizen. Before such action was taken we made tremendous efforts to persuade the Chilean Government, through diplomatic channels and through our ambassador, to do the right and proper thing. The fact that the Chilean Government did not do it forced us to take appropriate action, which was widely supported in the country at the time. That was the decision taken in relation to Chile, which was taken in the light of a specific incident and a specific problem and has no bearing on our relations with other countries or the way in which we conduct our affairs with other nations.

    Cyprus
    Miss Richardsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the British attitude in the recent debate in the United Nations on Cyprus.
    Dr. Owen: Unfortunately the non-aligned resolution was tabled with insufficient time to secure more acceptable amendments to it and so Britain, with a number of other countries, abstained.
    Miss Richardson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that Britain has a special and major responsibility as a guarantor to the independence of Cyprus? In view of the continuing disturbing reports coming from the island through, for

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    example, the United Nations civilian police reports, part of which were published recently, about the expulsion by the Turks of Greek Cypriots and looting in the North, does he agree that the Greek Cypriots are entitled to feel somewhat embittered by the lack of action on the part of the British Government? Will he seek a meeting with the Turkish Government to discuss the matter fully?
    Dr. Owen: I share my hon. Friend's concern. In fact, I discussed many of these issues with both Turkish and Cypriot individuals when I was in Cyprus very recently. We are all of us concerned at reports that Greek Cypriots in the north of Cyprus have been forced against their wishes to leave their homes and that looting is taking place. I think that the inter-communal talks should be the area in which we can look at these humanitarian questions. Whatever the reason for the exodus from the North, it is not calculated to improve the overall climate and atmosphere in Cyprus or the chances of achieving a settlement.
    Mr. Rees-Davies: Surely the Government should now realise that there has not been any measure of success through the United Nations and that it is now time for a new initiative to be taken, as has been suggested by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, with the countries of the EEC, after securing their agreement, and in association with the new régime in America. Will the Government now seek a really good British initiative, together with the EEC and the President of the United States, to ensure that there is a just and lasting solution by bringing together the people of Turkey and Cyprus?
    Dr. Owen: The British Government have been pursuing those objectives for the past few months. Intensive discussions have taken place within the European Economic Community and through the vehicle of political co-operation and discussions with the United States Administration. We fully support the concepts outlined in Dr. Kissinger's speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, many of which had been discussed among member nations.
    Mr. Atkinson: Is not my right hon. Friend now announcing the end of the Commonwealth as such? Is not Cyprus
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    a member of the Commonwealth, and are not a Government outside the Commonwealth—the Turkish Government—using their armed forces stationed in the northern part of Cyprus to accelerate or escalate the number of expulsions of Greek citizens from the North of the territory to the South? Therefore, have the British Government now washed their hands of all responsibilities there? Are we saying that progress in the matter can be made only as a result of intercommunal talks?
    Dr. Owen: No, Sir. That is certainly not our position. We think that inter-communal talks could be, and in the last analysis will be, the only way of reaching a settlement, but if there can be some outside help we stand ready to provide it. As for my hon. Friend's allegations about the Commonwealth, Cyprus remains a full member of the Commonwealth. What everyone on both sides wants is to see full democratic participation of Turkish and Greek Cypriots, with the two communities brought together.
    Mr. Townsend: Will the Minister take a personal interest in the plight of some 2,000 people who are missing following the Turkish invasion, and see what can be done quietly and diplomatically to release them from Turkey, if they can be found?
    Dr. Owen: When I visited Cyprus 1 discussed not only the problem of missing persons, which is very serious, but the question of displaced people. I also discussed with some Greek Cypriots living in camps outside their homes their difficult personal problems. The facts are clear. We must bring the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities together and forge again a proper Government of Cyprus, capable of speaking for all the people, and break down some of the historic enmities. But this will be very difficult to achieve.
    Mr. Christopher Price: Reverting to my right hon. Friend's original answer, may I ask whether on second thoughts he does not consider that our vote at the United Nations was very wishy-washy? Now that he is fully in command of the Cyprus situation in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, will he ensure that that sort of attitude in the United Nations is not repeated and that we take the lead in producing an initiative on Cyprus while

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    we have the chairmanship of the EEC Council of Ministers?
    Dr. Owen: Any United Nations resolution needs time. Those who wish to achieve the maximum amount of agreement and consensus must seek the agreement of member nations. That was not done in this case. I believe that if it had been done it would have been possible to achieve a resolution which commanded much more support.

    Thailand
    Mr. Newensasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on British relations with Thailand since the coup d-état of 6th October 1976.
    Mr. Luard: Her Majesty's Government maintain normal diplomatic relations with the present Government of Thailand. Our friendship for the Thai people is longstanding.
    Mr. Newens: Will my hon. Friend find a convenient way of expressing revulsion at the murder, torture and imprisonment of Thai journalists, students, teachers and others since the coup? Will he note that many of us, at least on the Labour Benches, would utterly deprecate the sale of Centurion tanks to the new régime, if the reports that agreement has been reached on the matter are confirmed?
    Mr. Luard: In the first part of his question it sounded to me as though my hon. Friend was referring to the incident at Thammasat University, which occurred just before the present Government in Thailand took power.
    Mr. Newens: Since.
    Mr. Luard: The main incidents of which we have knowledge occurred when the transition was taking place. Therefore, the present Government cannot take the responsibility. My hon. Friend knows that we do not give details about our arms sales to individual Governments, but I can say that present sales are on a very small scale.
    Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Thailand is under some threat from her eastern frontiers—some think a considerable threat? Will he confirm that our obligations, such as
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    they are, under the SEATO Treaty still stand?
    Mr. Luard: the degree of threat to Thailand from her eastern borders is a matter of opinion. Certainly, all existing commitments remain.
    Mr. Dykes: Inspired, although perhaps less boldly, by the courageous conduct yesterday of his right hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Prentice), will the hon. Gentleman tell the House why the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Newens) and his hon. Friends below the Gangway are dreaming of the day when the whole of Indo-China is Communist?
    Mr. Luard: I do not think for a moment that my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Mr. Newens), whom I know very well, is dreaming of that outcome. If my hon. Friend is concerned about the interruption of democratic Government in Thailand, I entirely share his concern, and I hope that Conservative Members also share it.

    Zambia
    Mr. Tebbitasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will pay an official visit to Zambia.
    Mr. Rowlands: My right hon. Friend has no plans to do so.
    Mr. Tebbit: Even so, will the hon. Gentleman accept my thanks for his efforts and those of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on behalf of my constituent, Mr. Balaam? Is he aware that my constituent has still not been paid the money owed to him after more than three years, and that the Zambian authorities are still obstructing the payment? Does not the hon. Gentleman think that the time may come when we must make it plain to Governments in receipt of foreign aid from this country that that aid is conditional upon their ending the bilking of British subjects?
    Mr. Rowlands: I am grateful for the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question. We have dealt with a number of cases concerning personal remittances from Zambia that hon. Members on both sides of the House have brought to my attention. Hon. Members will appreciate the Zambian Government's very difficult

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    problem of foreign exchange reserves. We have been making quite good progress. I do not think that attaching conditions to our programme of aid to Zambia would help deal with individual problems that hon. Members have raised with me in the past few months.
    Mr. Jim Spicer: The hon. Gentleman has stressed the problem of foreign exchange. Would not this be an appropriate time for him to have discussions with the Zambian Government about their problem of dealing with the many thousands of refugees who have streamed across the border from Angola? Will he then perhaps deal with the problems of those refugees who have moved into South-West Africa, again under pressure from the Cuban-led forces in Angola, and see what we can do to help?
    Mr. Rowlands: We have regular consultations with the Zambian Government on many issues of bilateral concern. Many of the matters that the hon. Gentleman raised are for the Zambian Government alone and are not of particular British concern.

    Rhodesia
    Mr. Townsendasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the present security situation in Rhodesia.
    Mr. Crosland: The security situation in Rhodesia continues to give cause for grave concern and underlines the need for an early settlement.
    Mr. Townsend: Does the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary appreciate that terrorist activity in Rhodesia, particularly the murder on Sunday night of 27 unarmed African civilians, is bound to reduce support for moderate opinion in Rhodesia and outside, and that without such moderate opinion it will be very hard to reach a settlement? What is he personally doing to put this fundamental point over to the front-line Presidents in Africa?
    Mr. Crosland: I recognise only too well that atrocities by whichever side—hot pursuit raids, whether into Mozambique or into Rhodesia—will do nothing to make a moderate settlement any easier. I accept what the hon. Gentleman said on that. But the important
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    influence that the British Government can exercise is not to make our views known to the two sides—those views are perfectly well known already—but to do everything we can to bring about a settlement, which alone will bring atrocities to an end.
    Mr. Ioan Evans: Has my right hon. Friend seen a statement by Mr. Joshua Nkomo that his life has been threatened in Rhodesia? What has he done to protect African Rhodesian leaders returning to Rhodesia to meet their people?
    Mr. Crosland: I fully accept that the British Government have a great deal of responsibility in these matters, but our responsibility does not extend to the protection of individual African leaders in Rhodesia. We have no armed forces or police there or in any of the surrounding countries.
    Mr. Churchill: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the horror and distaste that the British people hold for these continuing acts of terrorism, which are causing such suffering not only to whites but, above all, to the black population of Rhodesia? Will he explain why he has not made representations to the Government of the Soviet Union, who are responsible for arming, equipping and training these forces?
    Mr. Crosland: I have already made it clear today, and do so again, that I share the general feeling of horror and distaste although I hope that when the hon. Gentleman expresses horror and distaste in future he will do so in a more evenhanded way than he has done today, because this is not simply a one-sided business. It is two-sided. As for the Soviet Union and any intervention it is carrying out or intends to carry out in Southern Africa, we have made it clear to the Soviet Government that, if they believe in detente, detente is a worldwide concept covering Southern Africa also and is not confined to Europe.
    Mr. John Davies: Can the right hon. Gentleman reassure us that Mr. Ivor Richard, in his visits to Africa, has been guided by the right hon. Gentleman very firmly to bring to the notice of the frontline Presidents how gravely these incidents affect the whole course of the Geneva Conference and the attainment of a just and reasonable settlement?
    Mr. Crosland: Yes, Sir. Mr. Richard will bring this to the attention of the front-line Presidents, and, similarly, when he goes to Salisbury, as he certainly will, he will draw the attention of the Government there to the views held by most people here, if not by the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill), about some of the hot-pursuit incidents that we have seen and some allegations made against the white security forces by the Catholic Institute of International Relations.

  EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

    Foreign Ministers
    Mr. Hendersonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when next he intends to meet the Foreign Ministers of other EEC countries.
    Mr. Skinnerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next expects to meet EEC Foreign Ministers; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Crosland: On 18th January 1977, when, following the United Kingdom's first assumption of the Presidency, I shall chair the next meeting of the Council of Ministers.
    Mr. Henderson: Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to make that a historic event by marking his chairmanship by getting agreement on a new fisheries regime? Is he aware of the statement by the Minister of State yesterday that if there is gross over-fishing in January it will be difficult to control? Will he accept that many people in the fishing industry are genuinely concerned about how seriously he takes this matter? Does he regard it as sufficiently serious a crunch issue to say that he will withdraw from participation in the Council of Ministers and prevent a unanimous decision being taken unless our interests are recognised in this issue?
    Mr. Crosland: Anyone in the fishing industry who thinks that I do not take fishing seriously must be out of his mind.
    Mrs. Winifred Ewing: Tell that to the North Sea skippers.
    Mr. Crosland: As for agreeing to give priority to getting a proposal accepted
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    for an interim regime in January, the answer is "No", unless that regime suits the interests not only of Humberside fishermen but of those off the coast of Scotland. It is only given that condition that we would accept an interim fisheries regime.
    Mr. Skinner: Are these Common Market meetings doing any good at all? Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that it seems to me that every time we have these meetings they finish up with Britain going under once again, as with the recent remarks made about fishing? When he meets his colleagues again—if he finds he has to—will he tell them that we obliged them by borrowing £2,300 million in order that we could go on financing their manufactured goods in the Common Market, which in the year of reckoning totalled £912 million sold to us in excess of what we sold to them, and that that situation will be even worse this year?
    Mr. Crosland: Yes, Sir. I shall try to incorporate some of those statesmanlike sentiments.
    Mr. Blaker: Has the right hon. Gentleman yet discussed with his Community colleagues the important point he made recently at the NATO ministerial meeting about the risks involved in the transfer of resources from the West to the Soviet Union, in that it might help the Soviet Union to achieve its objectives in the Third World and to manufacture goods which would be sold to Western countries at unfair prices? If so, what was the reaction of his colleagues?
    Mr. Crosland: I cannot say that there was a single conclusion, since these Councils do not pass resolutions, but the matter was discussed at the last European Council, and I would like an opportunity to raise it again because I attach great importance to it.
    Mr. Greville Janner: When my right hon. Friend meets his Common Market colleagues, will he suggest a joint approach to Mr. Brezhnev to express, first, the delight of the House at the release of Mr. Bukovsky from prison and, secondly, the disgust of the House at the arrest of 30 professors and their wives in Moscow yesterday, and, thirdly, to suggest that if Mr. Brezhnev really wants détente he should beat his new sword

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    into ploughshares and release from prison those whose only crime is that they want to emigrate to Israel?
    Mr. Crosland: I, too, welcome, on grounds of personal liberty, the release of Mr. Bukovsky and the exchange which occurred, although it is an appalling commentary on these two totalitarian régimes that an incident like this had to occur. We lose no opportunity of pressing these points on visiting Soviet officials, whoever they may be, and a large part of the time taken up in the discussions with Mr. Ponomarev a few weeks ago was on precisely the matters my hon. and learned Friend has raised.

    Direct Elections
    Mr. Dykesasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he is satisfied with the European Community's progress with plans to introduce direct elections to the European Parliament by 1978.
    Mr. George Gardinerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he will next have discussions with other EEC Ministers on arrangements for direct elections to the European Parliament.
    Mr. Madelasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next expects to discuss direct elections to the European Parliament with his EEC ministerial colleagues; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Shepherdasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next expects to meet his EEC colleagues to discuss direct elections to the European Parliament.
    Dr. Owen: My right hon. Friend has no immediate plans to discuss arrangements for direct elections with his EEC colleagues. The Council will in due course need to determine the date of the first elections, but it is for member States first to take the necessary steps in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. As far as the United Kingdom is concerned, the Government have committed themselves to introduce the legislation this Session.
    Mr. Dykes: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reply. Will he confirm
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    none the less that the European Parliament, for example, would be seriously disappointed if the Foreign Secretary did not refer at length to the prospects for direct elections during his scheduled visit on 12th January to Luxembourg? Will the Minister of State also confirm that, since the European Governments have definitely decided that these direct elections should take place at the same time, the biggest impediment to that would be the British Government if the appropriate Bill were not introduced immediately in the new year?
    Dr. Owen: The timing of the legislation is still under consideration. It will be influenced by the progress being made on other major constitutional issues before the House. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will bear in mind the hon. Gentleman's plea to make an extensive reference to this in his speech to the European Parliament, and 1 shall at least make sure that he notes the suggestion.
    Miss Boothroyd: When does my right hon. Friend intend to have preliminary talks with the Boundaries Commission with a view to establishing electoral divisions within the United Kingdom?
    Dr. Owen: That is primarily a matter for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, and I will draw his attention to my hon. Friend's question. It is one of the matters which must be considered in the question of the timing of the introduction of the legislation and is, perhaps, the biggest problem we have in meeting the date of May-June 1978.
    Mrs. Winifred Ewing: Have any of the member States indicated that they insist on a list system for the direct elections? Do the Government favour a regional responsibility? If so, what progress does the right hon. Gentleman hope to make to stop us from being saddled with a list system?
    Dr. Owen: The hon. Lady will know that many of these issues were discussed by the Select Committee which looked into the matter. It is recognised that it will not be possible to have a uniform electoral system operating for all nine member countries on the first elections to the European Parliament, but it is envisaged and hoped that it should be possible for the next round of elections.
    Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Why is the Minister of State being so coy? Is he trying to stall and to say that we shall not have the elections? Can he not say when the Bill will be published and when we shall have its Second Reading? Cannot he answer his hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Miss Boothroyd) about the Boundaries Commission? Granted that it is the Home Secretary's responsibility, can he not say what will happen about it? Are not the Government committed to the Bill, or are they now back-pedalling, as they are on most other things?
    Dr. Owen: The hon. Gentleman will have to get used to the fact that responsibility for direct elections does not lie with my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. The main responsibility lies with the Home Secretary, as is the case with all electoral changes that are introduced. I should obviously like to be able to tell the House a date for Second Reading of the Bill, but I am in no position to do so at present.
    Mr. Jay: Do the Government intend to comply with the provision in the Treaty of Rome that any direct elections must take place in accordance with a uniform procedure in all member States?
    Dr. Owen: I thought that I had already covered that point in answer to an earlier question. I think it is widely recognised that it will not be possible to do this in the first round of elections. It is a hope, and my right hon. Friend is right to draw the attention of the House to the Treaty of Rome in this regard. It will not be the first case, or the last, I suspect, when the literal interpretation of the Treaty of Rome is not followed.
    Mr. Thorpe: Is it not better that we should be entirely frank with our European partners and tell them that as we shall probably have to have 81 individual inquiries before the Boundary Commissioners, which is essential if we have a single-Member system, which is archaic, unequal and capable of every sort of change, permutation and combination, there is not a hope in hell under that system that we shall be ready by 1978? Some of us think that it would be better to have nominations that do not pretend to be democratic rather than a bogus system that is not democratic.
    Dr. Owen: This will have to be discussed. The Select Committee drew attention to many of these matters. The right hon. Gentleman made a dissenting note on a number of its recommendations relating to the electoral system. His views on this subject are not entirely unknown to hon. Members on both sides of the House.
    Mr. Hurd: The Minister of State has told us in the presence of the Leader of the House that the Foreign Office is not responsible for the delay in publishing the Bill. Who is responsible? It is, after all, five months since the Prime Minister agreed with his colleagues on the number and distribution of seats within the Community, and four months since the Select Committee gave its views of what it thought were urgent matters. If the delay continues into the new year, will it not undermine our bargaining strength inside the Community, given that it has been agreed inside the Community—as the right hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe) does not seem to realize—that if any one member fails to achieve the target date the whole enterprise founders?
    Dr. Owen: I have not made any such allegation that someone else is responsible for the delay. As the hon. Gentleman should know, the publication of a Bill precedes its Second Reading usually by only a few weeks. That is quite common practice. Anyone who has been concerned in the House over the last few weeks during this Session will have realised that some of the legislation that has been passing through the House had to be put through the House for specific and special reasons, in some cases to be able to operate, such as in the case of the Fishery Limits Bill, by 1st January. That is why that legislation has had to take priority over other legislation. However, I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will take note of the hon. Gentleman's comments.

    Community Documents (Public Access)
    Mr. Spearingasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he is satisfied with the arrangements made for public access to EEC documents, including those originating from the European Assembly.
    Dr. Owen: No, but I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave to his Written Question on 16th December.
    Mr. Spearing: That reply merely said that my right hon. Friend was continuing to investigate this matter. I know that he has been doing so carefully for three months. Will he say whether the public have a list which is equivalent to that provided by the demand form for EEC papers which is available to hon. Members? Does he agree that, if they do not already have access to it, when a system is permanently brought into operation they should have equivalent access to an equivalent list?
    Dr. Owen: My hon. Friend well knows that I am dissatisfied with the arrangements. When I look into the matter—I am still doing so—one of the problems that I meet is cost. That is not a mile away from the issue of public expenditure. It is perfectly possible to produce a system that will give access to the public, but it will be costly. We must bear in mind that a system already exists in the European Communities Information Office in London.
    Mr. Spearing: No, it does not.
    Dr. Owen: I have arranged for people to go to that office and ask for certain documents, so I have had some "consumer investigation" of the situation. I am not totally satisfied, but I am afraid that any ambitious scheme which would resolve this problem would not be justified on the ground of cost. I am looking at ways in which matters might be improved, and we are discussing it with Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
    Mr. Powell: Will the Minister of State assist in ensuring that EEC documents, when placed before the House for debate, are in the latest form of such documents and not in a form which is already obsolete?
    Dr. Owen: The Scrutiny Committee has drawn attention to that fair and valid criticism. We have slipped up on a number of occasions. We shall do our best in this matter. The problem is that many of the documents go through three or four revises before coming before the House. There has also been a problem over numbering in order to ensure that dates on the documents are clear. We
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    shall do our best in the matter and, if necessary, issue explanatory memoranda covering changes that have occurred in the documents. This is a difficult problem, which is not easy to circumvent.
    Sir G. de Freitas: On the whole question of public access, will the right hon. Gentleman discuss with other Foreign Ministers the strange way in which the legislative functions of the Council of Ministers are performed? Is he aware of the strength of the criticism that he will meet in the European Parliament and elsewhere, and that this is the only case in the whole democratic world where Ministers legislate in secret?
    Dr. Owen: Over the last few months I have looked into this question. It was raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) earlier. It is true to say that there is a considerable resistance to doing this, but one of the problems is that there is no immediate parallel to Community decision-making. In some senses the Council of Ministers is a Cabinet. In some senses it is a legislature. The two functions frequently fuse together, as my right hon. Friend, with his experience in these things, knows well. There are great difficulties in trying to achieve a compromise between nine nations and in exposing that compromise procedure to public gaze. There are arguments on both sides, and I think that we should be perfectly prepared, open-minded, to keep the matter under review.

    Fishing Limits
    Mr. James Johnsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement upon the talks in Brussels with EEC Foreign Ministers regarding the 200-mile exclusive economic zone and relations between the EEC and Iceland.
    Dr. Owen: I did so yesterday.
    Mr. Johnson: I am not quite sure that I heard my right hon. Friend's reply. However, in view of yesterday's statement and the discussion that we had then, I should like to ask two factual questions. First, when will the legislation on 200-mile limits come into force after 1st January? This matter is vital to our Navy and its operations and the job

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    that it has to do. Secondly, the Yorkshire Post has informed us that telegrams have been sent from Humberside to the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Industry concerning deputations to discuss matters affecting Humberside. Is it possible to have an answer to them today?
    Dr. Owen: I know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is still considering the telegram that he has received about Humberside, and with a great deal of sympathy, as he is well aware of the problems. I confirm that the legislation will be operating from 1st January. We shall be taking all the necessary measures to ensure enforcement, across a very extensive area of water. I hope that hon. Members are under no illusions about that. I hope that that answers my hon. Friend's main points.

    ENGLISH CHINA CLAYS, ST. AUSTELL
    Mr. Penhaligonasked the hon. Member for Kingswood, as representing the Church Commissioners, what communications have taken place during the past 12 months between the Church Commissioners and English China Clays at St. Austell regarding the safety of the company's employees.
    Mr. Terry Walker (Second Church Estates Commissioner representing Church Commissioners): Letters were exchanged in March of this year relating to one specific case of an employee who was awarded damages following a claim that he had contracted the chest disease kaolinosis, caused by inhaling clay dust. The Commissioners are satisfied that the company's safety regulations and systems are conscientiously applied and kept under close review in consultation with the unions and the work force.
    Mr. Penhaligon: Many people appreciate the Church Commissioners' interest in the safety of employees. However, will the hon. Gentleman say whether the Church Commissioners looked into the safety record of the company before seeking so much publicity for this case? If they did, what did they find? If they did not, why did they not do so?
    Mr. Walker: The Church Commissioners deeply regret that the substance of
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    the recent Church Investors' meeting should have been leaked to the general public. This discussion was agreed among the denominations that were present and considered by all concerned to be informal and confidential. It is in keeping with the Commissioners' declared policy of discussing informally and confidentially with company management ethical and social matters such as this. But certainly we have taken steps to send people down to see the position at first hand, and we are perfectly satisfied with the safety provisions there.

WINDSCALE
The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Peter Shore): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement on Windscale.
On 3rd November I undertook to report further to the House on the planning application from British Nuclear Fuels Limited for further development at Windscale, which the planning committee of the Cumbria County Council had referred to me.
The application falls effectively into three parts: first, improved arrangements for handling and reprocessing irradiated Magnox fuel; second, development of a pilot demonstration plant for vitrifying long-lived radioactive waste; and, third, new facilities for reprocessing oxide fuel from the current generation of United Kingdom advanced gas-cooled reactors and from overseas. I have received many representations that the proposals in the application should be allowed to go ahead at once and I have received many other representations that the matters involved are of such national importance that the application ought not to be decided without full public scrutiny.
I have now made a thorough examination of all the issues involved. If proposals relating to the handling of Magnox fuel and the development of the vitrification plant on the lines I have already seen were all that were before me, I should be unlikely to see any justification for calling these in for my own decision. That part relating to the reprocessing of Magnox fuel is designed to improve the treatment of the fuel already at Windscale with a consequent improvement of the discharges. The vitrification plant is part of the research programme

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into the disposal of a long-lived highly radioactive waste on which the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, in its Sixth Report, urged the Government to press ahead.
Any discharges of radioactive material arising as a result of these proposals will be closely controlled under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960, and I intend to be personally assured that high standards of control are maintained at all times. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy has also indicated similar intentions in respect of his responsibilities under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.
The third proposal, on the other hand, which is concerned with the reprocessing of oxide fuel, raises different issues of major importance. Since I have no power to call in this one part of a single application and since I wish to avoid delay to the other proposals, I have decided to invite British Nuclear Fuels Limited to bring its proposals forward in separate parts. If and when a separate application is submitted for the oxide fuel reprocessing plant, I would propose to call it in to deal with myself and order a public inquiry under Section 282 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. This will enable all the relevant safety, environmental and planning considerations fully to be examined. It is my hope that the inquiry would proceed as speedily as it can.
The wide-ranging environmental implications relating to the development of nuclear power generally, which were the subject of the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, are under urgent consideration and the Government will be making their views on these matters known in due course.
Mr. Heseltine: Does the Secretary of State realise that it will be generally welcomed that he has decided to become involved in the particularly controversial aspects of these proposals while causing the minimum delay to the less controversial features? I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman three questions.
First, would I be right in assuming that British Nuclear Fuels Limited intends to proceed as the Secretary of State has suggested in his statement? Secondly, will the first two parts of the proposals now receive formal approval
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so that the minimum delay may be caused, as the right hon. Gentleman has already made it clear that he does not intend to intervene? Thirdly, the right hon. Gentleman says that he hopes that the inquiry will be as speedy as possible. In what way will the inquiry differ from others? The right hon. Gentleman, I am sure, would be the first to agree that planning inquiries of this sort usually are not characterised by a speedy process.
Mr. Shore: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his general welcome of my statement.
British Nuclear Fuels Limited has two options. It is for that concern to decide whether to withdraw the present application and to submit separate applications; or, I think, it is open to it simply to withdraw one part of its existing application. That is a matter to which no doubt it will be giving urgent attention.
I have already made clear to the House my general view on the two applications—the Magnox one, and that relating to the vitrification plant.
On the question of speed, I am sure that we all wish this matter to be settled as soon as possible. In looking for the chairman of the inquiry I shall be looking for some-one of great experience and distinction in handling inquiries and who, therefore, would be in a better position than most to bring the inquiry to a proper and thorough but also speedy conclusion.
Mr. Palmer: My right hon. Friend will know of the interest of the Select Committee on Science and Technology in this matter, but, that apart, may I ask him whether he will give the House an assurance that in ordering the inquiry he is not succumbing in any way to the extravagant fears that seem to be gripping this country about nuclear energy? If he is, it bodes ill for the industrial future of our nation.
Mr. Shore: My hon. Friend's great interest in and knowledge of the nuclear power industry is well established. I can certainly give him the assurance that I have not been unduly influenced by the less authoritative voices that have been casting doubt on the development of nuclear energy in this country. The conclusion to which I came was based mainly upon my study of the planning report

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of the Cumbria County Council and the fact that it said that this was a matter which it thought—and I agree with it—was for me to decide.
Mr. Penhaligon: I am delighted about the announcement of the Secretary of State, but does he agree that the decision to process oxide fuel for the world, thus making Britain the centre for the world's nuclear rubbish, is, at least in part, a political decision? Will the right hon. Gentleman arrange an opportunity for the House to make a pronouncement on such an important matter?
Mr. Shore: It is open to the House to make known its views on these and other matters. The processing of oxide fuel is a development of major importance which needs to be studied with proper care. However, I remind the hon. Gentleman that, leaving aside the question of trade in fuels and the processing of fuels, we have an AGR programme which will put some requirement upon us to reprocess those fuels, too.
Mr. Dalyell: My right hon. Friend said that if a separate application were submitted for the oxide fuel reprocessing plant he would call it in to deal with himself, under Section 282 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. Does not that manifest a lack of confidence in the authorities? Is it a fact that present AGRs require oxide reprocessing plant, and what will happen to the AGR programme if the decision goes against it?
Does my right hon. Friend understand that some of us, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer), are increasingly fed up with the attacks on the competence and integrity of the Atomic Energy Authority and British Nuclear Fuels Limited and with all the emotional briefs churned out by, no doubt, do-good organisations such as Friends of the Earth which are ill-informed and greatly damaging to British industry and do not face up to the fact that if we do this job, that will help the proliferation of nuclear power in the world?
Mr. Shore: I understand my hon. Friend's feelings, and I acknowledge his point about AGRs. We have a problem arising from the nuclear power programme apart from any additional quantities
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of fuel that we may wish to process from abroad. I have great confidence in British nuclear science—
Mr. Dalyell: Then say so.
Mr. Shore: I am saying so. I have confidence in British nuclear science and technology. We have a deserved reputation for leading the world in many parts of nuclear technology. But I do not take it as being a sign of lack of confidence in British technology that this process is subject to a planning application. We have planning applications on many matters that are of far less importance than this. It seems to be an expression of confidence in our industry that I am prepared to take this course.
Sir D. Walker-Smith: I welcome the Minister's decision to call in this application in view of its broad implications of national importance. Will he say a little more about the constitution and procedures of the inquiry? He has referred to the chairman of the tribunal. What will the invitation consist of, what assessors will there be reflecting the various technical aspects, and will the inquiry follow the normal procedures of a planning nature or the little-used but possible procedures of a national planning commission provided for by the Town and Country Planning Act 1971?
Mr. Shore: This is not a PIC, but it is a planning inquiry. I hesitate to go beyond that. No doubt the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows more than I do about what are normal or abnormal procedures in town and country planning inquiries. I shall he looking for somebody with great experience who commands general support to be chairman. I shall support that chairman with at least two assessors to assist in the many difficult problems arising from this complex subject matter.
Mr. Blenkinsop: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, although many of us are conscious of the employment considerations in this regard, many of us strongly support his decision to attempt to differentiate between the three parts of the application? Will he do his utmost to ensure that the two parts of the application to which there is little or no objection may go ahead as speedily as possible? Will he consider a time limit to be applied to the major application,

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about which there are proper national anxieties?
Mr. Shore: It would not be right to impose any time limit, and I shall not do so. However, I am sure that all concerned will be aware of the need to move forward as quickly as possible, consistent with a thorough inquiry. That is what we shall seek to do. My hon. Friend is right to mention the employment problem. We know that the proposed Windscale development will assist the employment situation. It will be of great help in regard to the two parts of the proposal involving the Magnox fuel facility and the vitrification plant so that it may go ahead without much delay.
Mr. David Steel: Will the right hon. Gentleman resist the siren voice of the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) and explain whether his statement involves, as I think it does, the implication that the Atomic Energy Authority will continue to look for sites in Scotland for the dumping of glassified blocks? Will he also ensure that it confines its searches to West Lothian?
Mr. Shore: I do not think that it is for me to answer the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question. I shall do my best to resist the siren voice of my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell).
Mr. Thompson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there will be a sigh of relief, however temporary, in my part of the Solway area? How is it possible to proceed speedily with the inquiry when the problem of the ultimate disposal of high-level radioactive nuclear waste has still not been solved?
Mr. Shore: These are complex matters, but they are very much within the area with which the inquiry will deal.
Mr. Robin F. Cook: Will my right hon. Friend accept that many of us who have followed these matters closely appreciate his personal efforts to secure a public inquiry? Will he also accept that it would have been inadequate to have allowed the local authority to take a decision on a matter such as this which raises questions of national importance and concern, especially when the local authority faces a number of aspects on which it is
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not competent to give a judgment? Would not his position have been untenable if he had failed to call in the application which would fulfil all four criteria if ever again he has to call in a more minor application, such as the decision to build a municipal dump outside Carlisle, which he has already called in?
Mr. Shore: I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. I believe that it would not be right for the matter to be settled by the county council, although I pay full tribute to the responsible way in which it conducted its planning inquiry.
Mr. Whitelaw: Speaking as a Cumbrian Member, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to ensure that the public inquiry will not be used by those who are totally opposed to any development at all to the extent of delaying the matter, thereby losing to this country valuable orders and also losing valuable jobs for the people of West Cumbria?
Mr. Shore: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman speaks for most hon. Members who agree that we have two duties. The first duty is to have a proper inquiry. The second is to have an inquiry that is not disrupted in any way by those whose interests are not aimed at establishing the facts of the matter.
Mr. Jim Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend realise that there are those on the Labour Benches who regretted his decision to call in the planning application in the first instance since it appeared to give undue weight to the criticisms voiced against the nuclear power industry? Once the decision has been announced, does he not agree that the inquiry should provide a suitable vehicle to show that the allegations presented by certain organisations are without foundation and groundless? Will it not also show the general public that cats or any other animals that go into dangerous places are likely to get killed?
Mr. Shore: I believe that what is false and misleading in the argument put against this development will be exposed in such an inquiry. I think that we have the duty to assure ourselves that what is proposed can take place safely, and with due regard to the future.
Several Hon. Members rose——
Mr. Speaker: I propose to call those who have already tried to catch my eye, but nobody else, because we have an enormous amount of business still before us. I call Mr. Arthur Jones.
Mr. Arthur Jones: May I take up the point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) in regard to the form of the inquiry? I know that the right hon. Gentleman will have regard to the interminable proceedings before the Roskill inquiry. Should that not be an example of how the present inquiry should not proceed?
Mr. Shore: I do not think that there is any analogy between the Roskill inquiry and the reasons for which it was set up and the terms of reference of the present inquiry.
Mr. Skinner: I speak as an ex-inhabitant of the earth and not on behalf of the Friends of the Earth, with whom I have some sympathy. I am concerned about future inhabitants of the earth. Is it not important to place growing emphasis on the fact that we have about 400 years' reserves of coal, plus North Sea oil and gas, which is sufficient for our energy resources over the coming generations so that we need not concern ourselves too much about nuclear energy?
Mr. Shore: In many ways we are a fortunate and happy land and I intend to keep it so.
Mr. Hugh Fraser: Would the right hon. Gentleman bear two considerations in mind? The first is the necessity for a quick decision on this matter; otherwise the plant will go to France. The Liberal Party ought to realise that that is of infinitely greater potential danger for this country than a plant in the North of England. That is a major fact as far as the environment is concerned. If the plant goes to France, the dangers to this country will be just as great for our population.
Mr. Shore: It is up to the French Government and the French people to make their own decisions in their own way and it is for us to do it in our own British way. I believe that we ought to have this inquiry and I can only add that it must be as quick as is reconcilable with thoroughness.
Mr. Atkinson: Are not the planning procedures a particularly tortuous and inappropriate method of coming to a fundamental decision of this sort? Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the scientific and engineering advisers who have already advised, approved and endorsed all the recommendations, both for the Department of Industry and for the Department of Energy, are the same people who will now advise my right hon. Friend's Department in this planning inquiry on engineering and scientific efficacy?
Is it not a contradiction that we should be coming in this way to fundamental conclusions of the sort now required, which, if the decision is adverse, would shift our whole nuclear policy in the opposite direction? Further, should we not have some sort of reassessment of what is involved in this inquiry, or, at least, cannot some lines of guidance be given to the inquiry, as to its purpose and the things it will be looking for?
Mr. Shore: There are certainly special features in an inquiry of this kind which do not make it easy to decide what is the best way of holding an inquiry. But I do not think that the procedures are tortuous and ineffective. I believe that this is the normal and the right way for establishing whether we should proceed with these particular proposals. I believe that we shall get the technical expertise necessary both in terms of assessors and witnesses who come before it.
Mr. Rost: As the issues involved in the proposed expansion of Windscale and the important matters raised by the Royal Commission are as much matters for the long-term energy strategy planning of this country as they are to do with the environment, what assurance do we have that there is proper co-ordination within Government Departments to guarantee that the views of the Department of Energy will be properly represented?
Mr. Shore: There is no problem about that, I can assure the hon. Gentleman. My right hon. Friend and I are in touch on all matters where interests overlap, but there is a separate matter to be debated, and I am sure that it will be debated, and that is the long-term energy policy of this country. I hope that the House will soon have an opportunity to address itself to this subject.
Mr. Hooley: Will my right hon. Friend make it clear to the House that proper anxieties about the development of nuclear power are not confined to this country, but are shared by such backward and unsophisticated countries as the United States, Sweden, France and Germany? Will at least one distinguished scientist be included in the inquiry?
Mr. Shore: As I have said, I am thinking about the appointment of assessors, and a distinguished scientist may be the sort of person who might serve in that capacity. My hon. Friend is entirely right in making the point that it is a problem which has a major international content. Many other countries are also concerned with these processes.
Mr. Forman: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that a growing number of Members on both sides of the House will welcome his statement today and feel that his assurance about there being an early debate on the Flowers report is an important step for the Government to take? Will he also take into account the inquiry conducted in Australia by the Fox Commission, the so-called ranger environmental uranium inquiry, which could offer some helpful suggestions to the Government in proceeding with this inquiry?
Mr. Shore: I shall look at the Fox Commission report in the light of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. Perhaps the Fox Commission is one more contribution to growing international literature dealing with the whole future of nuclear power.
Mr. Tom King: The right hon. Gentleman said that he had two objectives. One was to call the matter in for his own attention and for a public inquiry and the second was to see that this was resolved speedily. Is he aware that we recognise that he has achieved his first objective, but we fail to see how he has made any progress whatsoever in achieving his second? He said that all those concerned would wish to make speedy progress. What evidence do we have for that statement? The only accelerator he seems to have built in is an experienced chairman. What will he be able to do in the face of the sort of pressures involved in this type of inquiry?
Mr. Shore: The hon. Gentleman will recall that other major inquiries which
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we have held involving difficult environmental matters—I am thinking of the recent Flixborough inquiry—suggest that it is possible, particularly with skilled chairmanship, to have a thorough, yet not unduly prolonged, study.

STATE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT (TELEVISION)
Mr. Speaker: Yesterday the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Mawby) raised with me the question of the televising of the House without the permission of the House. I have been making inquiries, but it is quite clear to me that I need to have further consultations, and, with the permission of the hon. Member and that of the House, I shall make a considered statement when we return after Christmas.

BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS FOR FRIDAY 14TH JANUARY
Members successful in the Ballot were:

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg

Mr. Arnold Shaw

Mr. David Hunt.

BILLS PRESENTED
  NEW TOWNS (SCOTLAND)
  Mr. Secretary Millan presented a Bill to make provision as respects the revocation or variation of orders made under section 1, 2 or 5(1) of the New Towns (Scotland) Act 1968; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed [Bill 16].
  INSURANCE BROKERS (REGISTRATION)
  Mr. John Page, supported by Mr. Tim Renton, Mr. Michael Shersby, Mr. Ernest Perry, Mr. John Farr, and Mr. Julian Ridsdale, presented a Bill to provide for the registration of insurance brokers and for the regulation of their professional standards; and for purposes connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 28th January and to be printed [Bill 17].
  EMPLOYEE INVESTMENT
  Mr. Julian Ridsdale, supported by Mr. W. Benyon, Mr. Michael Grylls, Mr. Jeremy Thorpe, Mr. Brian Walden, Mr. Peter Hordern, Mr. Nick Budgen, Mr. L. R. Fletcher, Mr. Keith Stainton, Mr. David James, and Mr. Michael Marshall, presented a Bill to encourage companies to extend investment in the ownership of their shares to employees; to regulate the terms, conditions and extent of such investment including the liability to tax of the companies and employees; and for purposes connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 4th February and to be printed [Bill 18].
  PASSENGER VEHICLES (EDUCATIONAL AND OTHER PURPOSES)
  Mr. David Hunt, supported by Mr. Norman Fowler, Mr. Roderick MacFarquhar, Mrs. Lynda Chalker, Mr. John Watkinson, Mr. Richard Luce, Mr. Peter Hardy, Mr. Malcolm Rifkind, Mr. Paul Dean, Mr. Robert Hicks, and Mr. James Scott-Hopkins, presented a Bill to make provision for the use of certain motor vehicles by bodies concerned with education, with churches, with social welfare or with other activities for the benefit of the community; and for purposes connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 11th February and to be printed [Bill 19].

  HOUSING (HOMELESS PERSONS)
  Mr. Stephen Ross, supported by Mr. David Steel, Mr. Peter Walker, Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann, Mr. Andrew Welsh, Mr. Dafydd Wigley, Mr. David Knox, Mr. John Cartwright, Mr. Nicholas Scott, Mrs. Millie Miller, Mr. Fred Evans, and Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody, presented a Bill to make further provision as to the functions of local authorities with respect to persons who are homeless or threatened with homelessness; to provide for the giving of assistance to voluntary organisations concerned with homelessness by the Secretary of State and local authorities; to repeal section 25 of the National Assistance Act 1948; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First
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  time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 18th February and to be printed [Bill 20].

  ABORTION (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. W. Benyon, supported by Mr. Frederick Willey, Mr. James White, Mr. Ian Campbell, Mr. Leo Abse, Dr. Jeremy Bray, Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman, Sir Bernard Braine, Mr. Michael Roberts, Mr. Cyril Smith, Mrs. Margaret Bain, and Reverend Robert Bradford, presented a Bill to amend the Abortion Act 1967, and to make further provision with respect to the termination of pregnancy and matters consequential thereto: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 25th February and to be printed [Bill 21].
  PROTECTION OF CHILDREN
  Mr. Geraint Howells, supported by Mr. Cledwyn Hughes, Mr. Emlyn Hooson, Mr. Malcolm Rifkind, Mr. Dafydd Thomas, Mrs. Margaret Bain, Mr. James Kilfedder, Mr. Tony Newton, Mr. Torn Ellis, Mr. Russell Johnston, Mr. Cyril Smith, and Mr. Terry Walker, presented Bill to enable a person other than the parent to claim child benefit, or any other benefits or allowances payable in respect of a child, in circumstances where the child is living with that person and one parent: and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 4th March and to be printed [Bill 22].
  TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. Dudley Smith, supported by Mr. Geoffrey Rippon, Mr. Frederick Willey, Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke, Mr. Tom Bradley, Mr. Michael Grylls, Mr. David Ginsburg, Mr. Michael Marshall, and Mr. Kenneth Lewis, presented a Bill to amend the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 as respects stop notices and the provision of information to the Secretary of State for the Environment and Local Authorities; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 28th January and to be printed [Bill 23].
  RENTCHARGES
  Mr. Fred Evans, supported by Mr. Andrew Bennett, Mrs. Ann Taylor, Mr. Jim Callaghan, Mr. Frank Hatton, Mr. Mike Noble, Mr. George Rodgers, Mr. Ron Thomas, Mr. Terry Walker, Mr. John Watkinson, Mr. Joseph Dean, and Mr. Ted Garrett, presented a Bill to prohibit the creation and provide for the extinguishment, apportionment and redemption of certain rentcharges: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 11th February and to be printed [Bill 24].
  BUILDING SOCIETIES (REORGANISATION AND NATIONALISATION)
  Mr. John Ryman, supported by Mr. Max Madden, Mr. George Rodgers, Mr. John Lee, Mr Ivor Clemitson, Mr. J. W. Rooker, Miss Jo Richardson, Mr. Geoff Edge, Mr. Donald Anderson, Mr. Ted Leadbitter, Mr. James Sillars, and Mr. Norman Buchan, presented a Bill to provide for the establishment of a British Building Societies Corporation; to make provision with respect to the staff and functions of the Corporation; to provide for the transfer to the Corporation of all property, securities and other assets, rights, obligations, and liabilities of building societies; to amend the law on the activities carried on hitherto by building societies under the Building Societies Acts; to make provision for compensation; to make provision for the existing staff of building societies; and for purposes connected with the aforesaid matters: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 4th March and to be printed [Bill 25].
  ROAD TRAFFIC ACT 1960 (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. Tom Bradley, supported by Mr. Walter Johnson, Mr. Gordon A. T. Bagier, Mr. Greville Janner, Mr. Richard Mitchell, and Mr. Michael English, presented a Bill to amend the Road Traffic Act 1960, with respect to road service licences: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 18th February and to be printed [Bill 26].
  CLEAN AIR (PLACES OF ENTERTAINMENT)
  Mr. Roger Sims, supported by Mr. John Cartwright, Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk, Mr. Laurie Pavitt, Sir George Young, Mr. Andrew Bowden, Mr. Clement Freud, Mr. Dafydd Wigley, and Mr. George Thompson, presented a Bill to provide for the control of smoking in places of public entertainment; to require the provision of non-smoking facilities in such places, and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 4th March and to be printed [Bill 27].
  FIREARMS ACT 1968 (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. Marcus Kimball, on behalf of Mr. William Whitelaw, supported by Mr. Marcus Kimball, Mr. Jasper More, Mr. John Farr, Mr. Ben Ford, Mr. Alan Beith. Mr. Robert Boscawen, Mr. Michael Hamilton, Mr. Peter Rees, and Mr. Nicholas Ridley, presented a Bill to amend the Firearms Act 1968 with respect to the duration of firearm certificates and short-gun certificates; And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 28th January and to be printed [Bill 28].
  AVOIDANCE OF LIABILITY (ENGLAND AND WALES)
  Mr. Michael Ward, supported by Mr. Arthur Bottomley, Mr. John Cartwright, Mr. Robin Corbett, Miss Janet Fookes, Mr. Arthur Latham, Mr. Richard Luce, Mrs. Millie Miller, Mr. Stephen Ross, Mr. Kenneth Weetch, and Mr. Alan Lee Williams, presented a Bill to impose further limits on the extent to which civil liability for breach of contract, or for negligence, or other duty can, under the law of England and Wales, be avoided by means of contract terms and otherwise: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 28th January and to be printed [Bill 29].

  FIREARMS ACT 1968 (AMENDMENT) (No. 2)
  Mr. Roderick MacFarquhar, supported by Mr. Patrick Cormack, Mr. George Cunningham, Mr. Peter Hardy, Mr. Max

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  Madden, Mr. Cyril D. Townsend, Mr. Philip Whitehead, Miss Janet Fookes, Mr. Dafydd Wigley, and Mr. Russell Johnston, presented a Bill to amend the Firearms Act 1968 in respect to the use and possession of firearms and crossbows by young people; and for purposes connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and orders to be read a Second time upon Friday 11th February and to be printed [Bill 30].

  OCCUPIERS' LIABILITY
  Mr. J. W. Rooker, on behalf of Mr. Donald Anderson, supported by Mr. Peter Temple-Morris, and Mr. John Watkinson, presented a Bill to amend the law of England and Wales and Northern Ireland as to the liability of occupiers for injury to trespassers and certain other persons on any land or other property from dangers due to the state of the property or things done or omitted to be done thereon; to impose further limits on the extent to which the liability of occupiers for injury to persons on any property from such dangers can under that law be avoided; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 4th March and to be printed [Bill 31].
  PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSIONER (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke, supported by Mr. Dan Jones, Mr. Antony Buck, and Mr. Ian Gow, presented a Bill to amend the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967. And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 4th February and to be printed [Bill 32].

  SCOTTISH BANK NOTES
  Mr. Iain MacCormick, supported by Mr. Douglas Henderson, Mr. Donald Stewart, Mr. Gordon Wilson, Mrs. Margaret Bain, Mr. Douglas Crawford, Mrs. Winifred Ewing, Mr. George Reid, Mr. George Thompson, Mr. Hamish Watt, and Mr. Andrew Welsh presented a Bill to make Scottish bank notes legal tender throughout the United Kingdom: and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time
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  upon Friday 4th February and to be printed [Bill 33].

  EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION ACT 1975 (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. James Lamond, supported by Mr. Martin Flannery, Mr. Robert KilroySilk, Mr. John Ovenden, Mr. Ivor Clemitson, Mr. Brian Sedgemore, Mr. Frank Hatton, Mr. Ron Thomas, Mr. Eric S. Heffer, Mr. George Rodgers, Mr. Stan Thorne, and Mr. David Watkins, presented a Bill to amend the Employment Protection Act 1975 with reference to the certification of trade unions as independent; and for connected purposes: and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 28th January and to be printed [Bill 34].
  COUNCIL TENANTS' CHARTER
  Mr. Reginald Eyre, supported by Sir William Elliott, Mr. Walter Clegg, Mr. Anthony Grant, Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg, Mr. Anthony Steen, Mr. Fred Sylvester, Mr. Peter Rees, and Mr. Peter Bottomley, presented a Bill to provide for improved organisational and administrative arrangements under a Tenants' Charter; to give tenants of council houses and other occupiers certain rights; to provide for improved security of tenure in appropriate cases and improved rights as to transfer of tenancy; to enable tenants to purchase upon reasonable terms the freehold or a long lease of the property they occupy; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 11th February and to be printed [Bill 35].
  CONTROL OF FOOD PREMISES (SCOTLAND)
  Mr. George Younger, supported by Mr. Robin F. Cook, Mr. Hector Monro, and Mr. George Thompson, presented a Bill to prohibit as respects Scotland the sale, etc. of food in circumstances where there is a likely danger to health: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 18th February and to be printed [Bill 36].

  SITTINGS OF THE HOUSE
  Resolved,
  That this House do meet tomorrow at Eleven o'clock, that no Questions be taken after Twelve o'clock and that at Five o'clock Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without putting any Question.—[Mr. Foot.]

ADJOURNMENT (CHRISTMAS)
motion made, and question proposed, That this House at its rising tomorrow do adjourn till Monday 10th January.—[Mr.Foot.]
4.3 p.m.
Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: The Leader of the House will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that this is the only year in this century in which there has not been more than one day set apart for a foreign affairs debate. Certainly we have had no proper discussion of matters relating to foreign affairs. Further, the Select Committee on Cyprus has sat and reported to this House as long ago as April. Yet we have still not had an opportunity to debate that report, which is of the deepest concern to hon. Members in all parts of the House.
The mismanagement of the business of the House this year has been intolerable. Every single moment has been taken up with a volume of indigestible legislation. Because of this we have not fully discussed the financial state of the nation and we have as a result shut away from ourselves, in true parochial fashion, the opportunities which the House has always hitherto had for full and proper discussion of international affairs.
I would not have sought to raise this subject on the Adjournment but I do not believe that it is right that we should go into recess this Christmas without an opportunity for some of us to express a view upon the Middle Eastern situation at a time when a new initiative can be seized in different parts thereof, not only in Greece and Turkey but—and I see the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) in his place—in Israel and throughout the Arab States. An international initiative to break the deadlock is now vital. That international initiative must come from British leadership.
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More than any other country we have an obligation with Greece and Turkey to find a solution to this problem. We must not sit back. We must take active steps to secure that solution. I would like to draw attention to some wise words uttered by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition at a dinner on 24th November, which I believe represent the policy which ought to be adopted not only by the Conservative Party but by the Government. My right hon. Friend said:
" I would like to see a much stronger effort to concert the foreign policies of the Nine and to ensure that the economic strength and importance of the Community are used to further our common interests. Let us take for example, the unsolved problems of Cyprus which continue to overshadow peace in the Eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus, Greece and Turkey all have agreements with the Community; and Greece, with our full support, is negotiating for membership. I would like to see a joint initiative between the Community and the new American administration to bring together the different parties on the island and outside and make a strenuous effort to achieve the settlement which has eluded us all for so long."
In the recent election in the United States we know that strong support was given to President-elect Carter by the Greek community. We know, too, that the new Foreign Secretary in Mr. Carter's administration is an experienced man with a desire to secure a solution in the Middle East, more particularly with a desire to bring together Turkey and Greece and to resolve the problems of Cyprus and the Aegean.
This is the moment for our country, for the first time for many years, to seek to show true British leadership. In the report of the Select Committee on Cyprus, which I had the honour to initiate, we said:
"Her Majesty's Government should raise with the Members of the EEC the need for an early solution of the constitutional problems in Cyprus and invite early consideration of this issue in the European Parliament.
A further initiative on Cyprus should be made at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference.
Britain had a legal right, a moral obligation, and the military capacity to intervene".
That the Government had that opportunity and could have intervened in July and August 1974 there is no doubt. Had they decided to intervene at that stage, we should not be in the serious predicament in which we find ourselves in today.

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On 14th June this year, Lord Caradon, speaking in another place, said:
"But if, when with the authority of my Government "—
and this comes from a person very close and dear to the heart of the Leader of the House—
"I signed the Treaty of Guarantee, I had been told that the events—of which we now know—would take place without our Government intervening to take effective action to prevent the disasters which have befallen the island, I would not have believed it possible. I should have thought it was inconceivable."—[Official Report, House of Lords; 14th June 1976; Vol. 371, c. 1047.]
The Leader of the House knows full well that members of the Labour Party in another place are unanimous in their view that it is time we secured effective action. It is also true in this House, from the extreme Left of the political spectrum to the extreme Right, across all parties. We all believe that we should exert much greater effort to secure a solution in Cyprus.
Nobody could be so arrogant as to suggest that he had any one solution which would necessarily prove to be successful. But the Select Committee drew attention to a number of options, all of a constructive nature, that were open to us. We pointed out that everything hinged on unanimity of thinking in the EEC, and whether the EEC would seek to use the mailed fist or take more diplomatic action. The EEC could virtually force a solution. It has control over the arms and over the economy of those nations. It is not for me to say whether that is the right approach, but I believe that the situation is now such that it is imperative that the newly appointed President of the Commission, who this year is British, should at the beginning of the year immediately seek an initiative for a joint foreign policy on this issue with all the countries of the EEC.
In this area we have not so far had the successes and initiatives in the Common Market that have been seen in many others. Some of the initiatives in other matters have been failures, but at least they have been tried. For example, the common agricultural policy may have met with many failures but no one could say that there has not been much effort and much discussion. In this area of foreign policy, on the other hand, there has been virtually no public effort.
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We are told that conversations and diplomatic talks are continuing. No doubt they are, but it is time now for positive action and debate here and in the European Assembly. Where is the joint approach of Right and Left, with both parties getting together to say that Britain will give a lead to secure a solution? This matter should, therefore, be debated before we rise for the recess.
I think that the problem is not always sufficiently understood. After all, the Republic of Cyprus was established as an independent State, except for the two base areas over which we have retained our sovereignty. The Government have stressed that that will continue and that the sovereign bases will not be handed over to NATO or anyone else. But the independence and basic constitutional order, guaranteed by Britain, Greece and Turkey, overrules and outlaws Enosis and Taksim—the division of the island—and both those solutions were ruled out again in 1965 by the United Nations mediator Galo Plaza.
In 1972 the population of Cyprus was about 650,000, of whom over 110,000 were Turkish. What is the present situation? The Turks command some 40 per cent. of the Island, including Famagusta, the heart of the tourist centre. At present it is being pillaged. Much of the property is being destroyed. The ownership of the property is, in fact, Greek Cypriot. The trouble is that it does not matter who the owners are; the whole of the valuable tourist industry is being set at naught by the continued retention of control of Famagusta by the Turks.
It is an open sercret that the Turks themselves do not particularly wish to retain Famagusta. If there is to be a partition, it can only be by the agreement of the peoples of Cyprus. Surely, this House could at least unite to say—whether or not one feels that the Turks may have been badly treated in the past, and no doubt there is a great deal of force in such arguments—that it is in the interests of both Turk and Greek alike, and not only in the island, to bring the two sides together. Only by a solution of the Cyprus problem and then of the problems in the Aegean can we, together with the other countries of Europe, secure them as valuable allies in NATO once more, and as partners whom we need in the battle against Soviet imperialism.

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This must be viewed as an extremely important matter for our nation. It is shameful that this Government have so mismanaged their business that we have not been able to discuss this problem on the Floor of the House or have an opportunity to discuss other wider and equally important problems throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. The problems in Israel, the Arab States and the Aegean, and the question of which issues can by law be referred to The Hague and which should be so referred are just some many such issues.
I hope profoundly that next year we shall have an opportunity in this House to discuss matters of overriding importance both to Britain and to the rest of the world rather than engage in the party-political bickering on small issues which casts a shadow on what this great assembly ought to be.
4.18 p.m.
Mr. Greville Janner: I shall not take up the argument presented by the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies), except to say that I agree with him that we should have had a foreign affairs debate. I make but three comments on what he said. First, if we look to Israel at the moment we see the perils and horrors of coalition government and the sort of miseries that can come about when one is forced into partnership with those whom one would prefer not to have in the same Government.
Second, I agree that this is a time when we should be doing all we can to help the parties to come to terms in the Middle East. I hope that there will be a return to Geneva, and that it will be a meeting of representatives of decent Governments, not of terrorist organisations—of people who want to make peace, not war.
Third, it is a matter of the gravest concern both in the House and throughout the world that within the last 24 hours there have been arrests in Russia of people who had been seeking to leave the Soviet Union to go to live in Israel in peace and freedom and who have committed no crime whatever. I am sorry that we do not have an opportunity to debate that matter, and I ask the Leader of the House, who is known for his passionate concern for the freedom of all peoples, not just those privileged to live in and serve this country, to ask the
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Government to express to the Soviet authorities the disgust and anxiety of all right hon. and hon. Members at the current treatment of minorities in the Soviet Union, and our particular concern for the safety of those who have been arrested in the last 24 hours. I was told only a few minutes ago that they have simply disappeared. Their families do not know where they are, their children do not know and their colleagues do not know. They are among the most distinguished and bravest of the people fighting for freedom in the world today—professors and men of learning—and all they wished was to hold a seminar in a private house, having been forbidden to do so in public, as they should be entitled.
Mr. Ivan Lawrence: Before the House adjourns for Christmas there ought to be some expression of our concern about what Mr. Bukovsky has said. He claims that since the Helsinki Agreement the measures taken against dissidents in Moscow have been harsher than before.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern): The scope of the debate on the Adjournment for the recess always presents considerable problems for the House. What I have listened to since I came into the Chamber today is a foreign affairs debate. The hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) has not yet made any reference to the Adjournment. I know that it is difficult, and that the scope of the debate is wide, but it is wholly irrelevant to have an Adjournment debate on foreign affairs.
Mr. Janner: I bow to your judgment, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I thought I had twice referred to the fact that the House must not adjourn without discussing this matter. We in this House are concerned not only with our own freedoms but with the freedoms of others. I respectfully suggest that this is a matter of grave concern to all of us and that the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West should have been able to make the speech that he did make.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am not disputing that this is a matter of grave concern. I must make that abundantly clear. The question is whether this is the occasion to express such concern, and whether this should be a foreign affairs debate.
Mr. Janner: In any event, I wish to raise, briefly, another matter which is of immediate and absolute concern, namely, the disgraceful behaviour of the Post Office in connection with discrimination against people who live in particular streets or areas. I had hoped that this could be debated before the House rose for the recess.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt so often, but the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West was successful in the ballot to raise this matter in the Consolidated Fund Bill debate, but he chose to withdraw.
Mr. Janner: It was No. 19 in the list of subjects for debate and the reason that—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: It may have been nineteenth in the list and not reached until 10 o'clock in the morning, but that is the business of the House and the way in which the House conducts its business on the Consolidated Fund Bill.
Mr. Janner: I am much obliged to you for that indication, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall try to be extremely brief.
I wish especially to raise matters that have happened since then and that will concern all hon. Members—not only those who might have been awake at the hour at which the subject might have been raised during the Consolidated Fund Bill debate. The matter is of enormous interest and importance and it verges on a question of privilege.
Sir Edward Fennessy, who is the deputy chairman of the Post Office Corporation, responsible for telecommunications, has continued to refuse to give me details of those areas in my own constituency in which discrimination is exercised. It is bad enough that the Post Office should say that because someone lives in a particular street it will not give that person a telephone without payment of a large sum in advance. It is worse when a great corporation insists on shrouding its operations in a cloak of secrecy and refuses to give MPs information about the people against whom it is discriminating.
During the last few hours I have received a huge number of letters and telephone calls from all over the country.
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They indicate that this is not a local matter at all, but one which concerns people from the North of Scotland to the South of England.
In those circumstances, I am sorry that we cannot debate the Post Office and other establishments in the private and public sectors that seek to impose credit terms, demand advances and insist upon deposits, not because an individual person is or is not creditworthy—as they are entitled to do—but because of where a person happens to live. This form of guilt by habitation ought to be banned from both private and public sectors. Sir Edward Fennessy ought now to change his methods, apologise for refusing to give information and apologise for his delay in replying to constituency letters, or resign.
4.26 p.m.
Mr. Ian Percival: I wish to speak against the motion for the Adjournment of the House on the grounds that the House should not adjourn tomorrow until it has discussed Early-Day Motions Nos. 57, 58 and 59 that have been put down in the names of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir M. Havers) and myself and that relate to bankruptcy matters. The House should not adjourn until some assurances have been received from the Government about those matters.
In order that the House may form some view as to the merits of my proposition I must give the barest outline of the background upon which it is based. The House knows that a measure called the Insolvency Bill came to us from the Lords early this year and that it occupied much of our time until 26th October when the Bill went through its final stages here.
The Bill had a bad start because there had been no consultation at all. That matter was repaired through the joint efforts of Ministers, Opposition Members and a working party of banisters and solicitors that rendered very great assistance to all those who were concerned with this measure. That is of particular relevance to my motion for a reason which I will tie into my argument in a moment.
I need not remind the House that bankruptcy is one of the few remaining ways in which a person lawfully owed

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money may recover it from another who has assets but will not pay. It was proposed to put up the minimum debt upon which a bankruptcy petition could be founded, and quite rightly so because the value of money has changed. There was considerable argument about the threshold and the Government finally accepted our view that it should be £200 and not £300.
That is, however, only one of the monetary considerations which are very important when a person has to decide whether to take advantage of the bankruptcy procedure. The other consideration is the size of the deposit that must be paid when a bankruptcy petition is filed. At the moment it is £5 in the case of a man filing his own petition and £7·50 for a creditor filing a petition against a debtor.
These deposits are not altered by statute in the same way as the £200 limit which has therefore been fully discussed by the House. These limits are altered by Statutory Instrument made by the Lord Chancellor with the concurrence of the Secretary of State for Trade. Furthermore, the form of Statutory Instrument used is one which does not come before the House at all and is not even subject to the negative procedure. It is called a Statutory Instrument and it is laid before the House but there is no procedure open to us to discuss what is being done by such a Statutory Instrument.
Right from the start, it was known that the Government proposed to change these deposits and to put them up dramatically. It was also known that we could not discuss the merits and demerits of that within the debates on the Bill because the matter did not come within the provisions of the Bill. On 27th April the question of these deposits was raised and I ask the House to bear that date in mind because although the Government have frequently said since then that this matter of the deposits was urgent, nothing was done about it until 15th November, the date when the Bill received Royal Assent.
By 1st June we had all agreed that something else should be done. That was that a new Rules Committee should be set up to consider rules such as the one
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of which I have just spoken, and which hitherto had not been open to consideration either by hon. Members or by anyone else. It will be no surprise to the House to know that the argument was advanced at an early stage that because we could not discuss the question of raising these deposits in the House, that question should be postponed until this new Committee was in being and could consider them.
On 1st June, however, the Under-Secretary of State for Trade wrote to me as follows:
"I ought to add, however, that we shall not be able to delay, until the Committee has been set up, the amendment to the Bankruptcy Rules which will give effect to the increased deposits required to be paid on the presentation of bankruptcy petitions, as these are crucial features in reducing the present excessive strains on the Insolvency Service."
I ask the House, against that background, to bear in mind that nothing was in fact done until 15th November. It transpired that it was not quite as urgent as the Minister had at that stage suggested.
On 17th June in Committee I warned the Minister that if the deposits were to be put up in such a way or at such a time as to preclude the Committee from looking at them, that procedure would be open to serious criticism. That is exactly what has now happened, and I adhere to the view that what happened is open to serious criticism. Further, the Leader of the House knows, I think, that that view is held strongly by many hon. Members and by interested persons outside the House particularly those who did so much to help those of us in the House to improve the Bill.
It is fair to say that the Minister said that he could not give me the undertaking for which I asked on 17th June. The result was of course that we set up a watching system, to make sure that the order was not laid without our knowing, for if the order had been laid while the Bill was still going through the House, we would still have had our negotiating position to assist us with our argument about those changes.
But nothing happened, no order was made before, on 26th October, on Report, the Under-Secretary of State for Trade introduced a new clause setting up the Committee that we all wanted to see

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set up. I wish to quote one paragraph from what he then said:
"The purpose of the clause is to establish a committee which will be under a statutory duty to keep the bankruptcy and winding-up rules under review and to make recommendations to the Lord Chancellor about any changes in the rules which the committee deems it to be desirable."
But it is to the next sentence that I wish particularly to draw to the attention of the Leader of the House:
"In addition, the Lord Chancellor will be obliged to consult the committee before exercising his existing powers to make bankruptcy or winding-up rules."—[Official Report, 26th October 1976; Vol 918, c. 287.]
I and others inside and outside the House felt at that stage that the battle that had been waging was over, and that the Minister was saying in effect "We have not put up the deposits yet. We shall now have a Rules Committee which will do such-and-such in the future and, in addition, the Lord Chancellor will have to submit changes under his existing powers to that committee." On that day the Bill went through very amicably, and we all thought that that was the end of the matter.
On 11th November—after the Bill had completed all its stages here—the Lord Chancellor signed an order putting up the deposits. On 15th November that order was signed by the Secretary of State for Trade. Also on 15th November the Bill received the Royal Assent. No information about this was before Parliament even then because the order was not laid until 24th November. None of us suspected anything.
Had we not just passed a Bill which included provision for setting up a Rules Committee to which such rules would in future be submitted, and had we not received an assurance from the Under-Secretary of State for Trade that the committee would consider the rules made under the Lord Chancellor's existing power? How innocent we were! On 19th November another order had been made—the commencement order bringing into force Section 10, which set up the Rules Committee. This order brought that section into force on 20th December.
So the order putting up the deposits was made on 15th November, laid on 24th November, and came into operation on Friday 17th December whilst the
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order setting up the Rules Committee was made on 19th November, and brought those provisions into force on Monday 20th December. The various provisions had been so used that nothing was done until the House had lost its position in relation to the matter and, in particular, the Opposition had lost their negotiating position. The two powers were then used in such a way as to ensure that the deposits were raised to these highly controversial sums on the Friday before the Monday on which the Rules Committee which should have looked at them was to come into being.
An outside observer has made this moderate comment:
"The timing of these orders is striking."
So it is. The Opposition have so far taken the view that they could not believe that Ministers would deliberately so use their powers as to produce intentionally a situation in which matters of great interest to the public were precluded from discussion by anyone. If that were done deliberately, it would be disgraceful.
Two Ministers are concerned—the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Trade. I am happy to say at once that I am assured by the Under-Secretary of State for Trade that the Lord Chancellor was not concerned in the timing. I am not surprised at that, and I am happy to accept and repeat that information. I am left wondering about the actions of others who must be concerned.
I am choosing my words carefully, because I would still much rather see this put right than make a fuss about it. It can be put right. The new deposits came into operation on Monday, two days ago. If the order were withdrawn, the few who have paid the new deposits could be given their money back and for the short period it would take to deal with the matter properly the old rates could continue to apply.
I urge upon the Leader of the House that he should take action. It is very important that he do so for two main reasons. First, it simply is not right that such charges should be made without the opportunity for discussion of them particularly when, as in this instance, that opportunity could be so readily provided.
Secondly, I want to read one passage from a letter written by the chairman

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of the joint working party to which I referred earlier, to the Solicitor-General. Having set out the timing to which I have referred, he said:
"Sorry as I am to say it, it is precisely conduct of this kind which fosters the disillusionment and lack of trust which already constitutes a very serious division between politicians and the rest of the community, including, I fear, the professions."
I know the writer of that letter as a moderate and fair man. I want the Leader of the House to understand that that is the feeling of people outside the House who have taken an interest in this matter and themselves worked hard for so long to assist us in improving the Bill. If at the end of it all, because of some mistake or because somebody—at what level I do not know—thought that it was clever, we were to set all that at nought when it could be so easily put right, I think we would be mad.
I end by relating my argument to the motion again. For the reasons that I have given I do not think that this House ought to adjourn without discussing this matter, or—I repeat my alternative—receiving an asurance from the Government that steps will be taken to remedy the grievances to which I have referred, I consider that they are very real and genuine grievances but whether they are or not, there are many people like the writer of the letter that I have quoted who feel very strongly that that is so. They are grievances which can do nothing but harm to this House and which could defeat any future efforts to ensure the kind of co-operation that we had on this Bill unless we take some steps to put them right—and it is so easy for us to take steps to put the matter right if we just have the will to do so.
4.42 p.m.
Mr. Robert Hughes: I would raise the £6½ million investment by Barclays Bank in the South Africa Defence Bond fund as a reason why the House should not go into recess tomorrow. This matter was reported last week when it was revealed that the £6½ million investment is the largest contribution so far to the South African Government's appeal for a fighting fund which now totals £60 million.
In response to questions about why the bank had done this, the managing director
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of Barclays National in South Africa said:
"We regard the contribution as part of our social responsibility, not only to the country at a particular stage in its history, but also to staff members called upon to do service on our borders."
That means South Africa's borders. The kind of social responsibility and the kind of society in that country is revealed in a report from Johannesburg on the 15th December headed:
"Another detainee dies in South Africa."
It stated:
"He is Mr. George Botha, aged 30 a teacher,"
who had been taken in for detention and questioning. Mr. Botha is the ninth person to die in detention in South Africa this year. The report adds:
"His death comes only three days after an Oxford graduate detainee, Mr. Wellington Tshasibane, was found dead in a police cell."
When the Press made inquiries to the South African police about what had happened the Commissioner, General Gert Prinsloo, said:
"He jumped down a staircase well next to the lift as he was being taken up to the office."
This kind of excuse with regard to the number of people who have died while in detention, or under questioning and torture in South African prisons, numbers many dozens. Often the excuse is that a person jumped out of a window nine storeys up and was under no pressure or harassment. General Prinsloo said of Mr. Botha:
"He hadn't been questioned yet."
That is a common reply—that a person had not been under questioning and had been under no pressure or harassment. These people were just so terrified about what might happen to them that they had to take this course of action. The number of times and the number of ways that this kind of death to people in detention occurs is serious.
It was reported that on 10th December, 433 people were held in detention, some of them without trial and many of them without charge. It is true that some of them are released. But we know that there are many hundreds still in detention and that this is only the tip of the iceberg of the violence in South Africa.
One has only to remember the events in Soweto and many other townships to realise the kind of society in which

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Barclays National believes that it has a social responsibility. Barclays Bank is important not just because of this investment. We ought to realise the important part that Barclays National plays in the banking system of South Africa itself.
Mr. Tim Rathbone (Lewes): It is important to point out that Barclays Bank, while in no way condoning the Government in South Africa—indeed, I in no way condone the Government in South Africa—was simply making an investment switch from one necessary form of investment for continuing operations within South Africa to another necessary form of investment under the Government's rules. The bank was not condoning any action by the Government by making this cross-investment.
Mr. Hughes: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, I think that is the lamest excuse that I have heard.
Mr. Rathbone: It is true.
Mr. Hughes: There is no compulsion on Barclays National to put one farthing or one rand or one pound or whatever into the fighting fund. Barclays Bank is under an obligation to hold a certain amount of its investment in general stock within South Africa, but there is nothing whatever to compel it to cross-reference that investment. The hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) suggests the lamest of excuses.
The hon. Gentleman recognised the importance of Barclays, but Barclays is not the only bank. Barclays and the Standard Bank have dominated the South African banking scene for the last 50 years, despite pressure from the buildup in the number of Afrikaner banks. Two major British-owned banks control over 60 per cent. of South Africa's banking deposits. Indeed, they have gone much further. Taking all the different types of banks together—commercial banks, merchant banks, general banks and hire-purchase houses—British companies have majority holdings in four of the South African top 20 and substantial minority holdings in many others. Their banking business goes right across the board within South Africa itself.
As the hon. Member for Lewes said, Barclays Bank and other British companies
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and multinationals have told us many times that they do not condone apartheid and that they are against apartheid. We have had enough of those pious protestations. We have been told that they had their money in South Africa not to defend or support the white minority but to help the black majority. All of us on this side of the House, and, I believe, many hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition side, know that that is not true.
We have always known that these companies had a vested interest in maintaining apartheid. In the past we have described the multinationals and British companies that had such investments as the accomplices of apartheid. With hindsight and in view of what has happened recently, that is too charitable. It is perfectly clear that they are the bulwark of apartheid. They are the mainstay and an integral part of the apartheid system, because neither investments nor apartheid could exist one without the other.
The assertion by Barclays that the investment is a social responsibility clearly shows that it is firmly in support of the apartheid system. It is investing voluntarily, without any pressure whatever, in defence bonds to ensure that the South African army is built up and that it has the best of equipment in order to carry out its policy of oppression.
Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch and Lymington): In the hon. Gentleman's opinion does the same situation pertain because the present Government are making available long-term, low-interest loans to the Soviet Union? Does that mean that the present Government are in support of the Communist Party in Russia?
Mr. Hughes: I think that we are speaking about different matters. We are speaking, on the one hand, about bilateral trade and, on the other hand, about a company which, in the view of many of its supporters, has said that it is entirely opposed to apartheid, yet is willing to place itself firmly in that system and to support the deliberate oppression and massacre of people. Does the hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington (Mr. Adley) defend the system of apartheid? I certainly do not defend the Soviet system. We always hear these selective arguments from the hon. Gentleman.

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I raised this question with the Prime Minister by letter, but so far I have received only an acknowledgement. I also raised the matter with the Leader of the House during business questions last Thursday. My right hon. Friend said that he would look into the matter, try to discover what the position was, and report to the House. The House certainly should not go into recess until it has a report on what action the Government intend to take.
I hope that we shall not be told that the matter is purely and simply for Barclays National in South Africa and that the Government have no locus. I point out that 65 per cent. of Barclays National is owned by Barclays in the United Kingdom, so there is a direct British rôle in this investment.
The Government took the view—I welcomed it, although it did not go far enough—that they had a responsibility for the way in which British companies behaved in South Africa when, following the Public Expenditure Committee Report, they sent guidelines to British companies operating in South Africa regarding the conditions that they should offer to black workers, wage rates, trade union participation, and so on. The Government recognised that, although the companies may be subsidiaries of British companies, they had a clear locus in the matter.
I believe that the matter goes further. The Labour Party has adopted a tough programme of action to try to end apartheid in South Africa. If, by means of shifting money from one place to another, multinationals can bypass the Government's policy on apartheid, particularly the arms embargo, it is an extremely serious matter.
Many people, having heard of this investment, have called upon the Government to insist that the investment be cancelled. We believe that apartheid brings nothing but horror to the people who have to live under it. This system has gone on for many years. It is time that the Government took strong action on their policy towards South Africa. In particular, they should tell the multinationals that they do not regard their
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presence in South Africa as helpful to the people who have suffered under such domination for so long.
4.53 p.m.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed): I wish to speak against the motion.
In common with other hon. Members, I had raised with me late last night matters which I believe call for a ministerial statement—namely, the effects of the Government's measures on the concrete pipe industry. Only yesterday we had the opportunity of debating at length the general economic measures, but little specific information was forthcoming. Many hon. Members will have constituents and constituent firms who are beginning to realise what the effects of the economic measures will mean to them.
I want to draw the Lord President's attention to the concrete pipe industry. It is important that we get a ministerial statement regarding the effects of the economic measures on that industry. However, the procedure open to us offers little prospect of any such statement being made. I hope that the Leader of the House will use the means at his disposal of averting the necessity for opposing the motion by ensuring that he has information to bring before the House when he winds up the debate. The House should not go into recess before this serious matter has been dealt with.
It is all very well for us to pass a motion saying that we can go home and enjoy Christmas with our families, but we must show concern for constituents who may pack up work for Christmas for the last time, because, unlike us, they will have no work waiting for them after the recess. That is the position facing the concrete pipe industry, which is closely tied to the water and sewerage industries and the work of the regional water authorities which are to be heavily subject to the Government's measures.
I should like to draw to the attention of the Leader of the House messages received by the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment last night and a telegram which I received late last night from a factory in my constituency belonging to Hume Pipe Ltd. The factory is at

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Howick, near Longhoughton, in my constituency. The telegram reads:
"Howick factory under threat of closure if six month moratorium is imposed on water authorities."
The telegram then quotes the message given last night to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment:
"'Mr. Armstrong, Concrete Pipe Association reported six month moratorium being imposed on all regional water authority new contracts. If this is done literally my company and I feel the whole industry will have to give formal notice of redundancy to all employees before Christmas. Current levels of deliveries have already reduced the industry to near breaking point. We have since November 1973 taken disproportionate share of cuts and merit exemption from this round of cuts. We require assurances and guidance'".
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will find some way of giving that guidance and those assurances before Christmas, because some of my constituents will be breaking up for the holiday period with no certainty of jobs afterwards.
Mr. Lawrence: I share a common cause with the hon. Gentleman on this occasion. Is he aware that Spun Concrete (Branston) Ltd will almost certainly have to sack 100 employees within six weeks after Christmas if this moratorium goes through, because the company is dependdent for 98 per cent. of its work on the regional water authority and has hitherto been working at 50 per cent. under capacity?
Mr. Beith: The situation described by the hon. Gentleman closely parallels that in my constituency, where a firm employing 66 men is in a similar position. About 90 per cent. of that firm's work is for the regional water authorities. Less than 10 per cent. of its work is for other organisations. If further work on the construction of concrete pipes for the regional water authorities is not available, there will be no employment for those 66 men. There is not the slightest prospect of other employment for those men in my constituency. Where else can they go? The construction industry—the only industry which could employ them—is in a desperate state and in no position to offer jobs to people made redundant in other industries.
The factory concerned has been threatened with closure before under earlier cuts. As the telegram pointed
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out, the industry has suffered a whole series of these cuts. The industry needs to know straight away whether there will be any prospect of continuity of work or whether the six months' moratorium will become a 12 months' moratorium.
I hope that the Lord President will find some way of communicating with the Department of the Environment and of ensuring that some guidance is given to the firms involved. We are dealing with men who have little or no prospect of alternative employment—men who have already been on short-time and have spent periods out of work in this badly hit industry.
We shall need the concrete pipe industry if we are to solve our major pollution problems. Without the pipes for the sewage and water systems, we cannot tackle the problems that the public are demanding that we should tackle in future years. I fear that if the industry does not get more detailed guidance on the effects of these measures now, individual firms will close. Most of the firms involved have factories in different parts of the country. Therefore, they are bound to consider which of their units to close down completely and which to keep going during the moratorium with virtually no work at all. I greatly fear that the unit in my constituency will be closed. I beg the Government to give an indication of how they see this important industry getting through what is bound to be a difficult period.
I think that it would be more manageable if we had more detailed guidance than we have had so far, and I do not think that right hon. and hon. Members can pass motions casually giving ourselves a holiday without recognising that the holiday for some of our constituents could be the beginning of a long period of unemployment.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: It would help the Chair to keep a proper balance in the debate if any right hon. or hon. Member wishing to participate in it would indicate whether he thought that the period of the recess was too short. In that way, the Chair will be able to keep the debate on an even keel.
5 p.m.
Mr. William Molloy: You are aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that

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certain Members of this House and of the other place are members of the British delegation to the European Parliament.
I regret that time has not been found for this House to examine the procedures and the hopes and aspirations of the European Parliament and, not least, the experience of some of those who have served in it for a little while. I believe that many of the advantages which may materialise in due course will not do so if some of the bad features of the administrative and structural make-up of the European Parliament are allowed to persist.
I am sure that most right hon. and hon. Members acknowledge that the existing procedures of the European Parliament hardly qualify that institution for being called a parliament at all. However, it must be added that these may be regarded as early days and that, since the advent of the British delegation to it, especially of the Conservative and Labour Members who have been part of that delegation, a massive improvement has been brought about, and I have no doubt that this will continue. [Interruption.] I did not catch what the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) said, but it was with deliberate honesty that I excluded his party from my comment.
I believe that this House should be made aware of the frustration, irritation and annoyance of those of us who endeavour to contribute to the work of the European Parliament and that this House ought to debate such matters as the power of the Commission and of the Commissioners. We appreciate the administrative necessity for them. At the same time, many of us believe that the powers vested in the Commissioners are far too great. Although, until now, the EEC Commissioners may have been reasonable men, that does not mean that in exercising their powers in the future they will not be unreasonable men.
An EEC Commissioner is, after all, the equivalent of a Permanent Under-Secretary in one of our great Departments of State. I sometimes wonder what would happen here if a Permanent Under-Secretary decided to override and disregard a motion of this House or a statement by a Cabinet Minister. That is the kind of situation that can arise under EEC procedures, and there seems
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to be no way of checking that it has occurred. That is one matter that I want this House to acknowledge.
We do not see in the near future any likelihood of the creation of ways and means whereby we might change the massive power which is vested in the Commision and its staff, although there is some hope that, with a British President this coming year, we shall see a move towards a more democratic structure in the European Parliament and some diminution of the present authoritarian powers of the Commission.
Taking into account the contributions of the Members of the European Parliament who come from the various countries, it might be expected that, when motions of that parliamentary gathering have been passed, there would be some way of ensuring that the expressions of opinion in the European Parliament would be taken cognisance of, if not incorporated in legislation. That is not always the case, however. Perhaps one small example of it is to be found in the present fishing dispute with Iceland and the endeavours of the relevant Commissioner and his staff. In this instance they have tried very hard. However, it must be stressed that the procedure was set in motion thanks primarily to the efforts of the British delegation.
Here again, hon. Members who are at one on this issue as Members of the European Parliament sit in various parts of this House, and I believe that if some of their endeavours had been embarked upon much earlier we might not have reached the present impasse.
As I understand it, in a few years there will be direct elections to the European Parliament. It seems to me that, unless the men and women who ultimately will be elected from our country have some parliamentary experience and unless they know precisely what it involves, there is a grave danger that these almost almighty bodies will gather unto themselves total power. That is the danger, and I believe that this House should be made aware of it.
Having lived on the Continent for many years and having had experience of all that was involved when I was employed in one of the Departments of State, I was opposed originally to the idea of Great Britain joining the EEC.

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What is more, the British people were never asked whether they wished to go into the Community. However, after a period of years they were asked whether they wanted to stay in, and their answer was an overwhelming "Yes". That had to be accepted, and I have accepted it in my own endeavours. But it must be said that some of the apprehensions which many of us had about the EEC are now seen as proven fact, especially when we see the lack of power of the European Parliament when compared with the power vested in the Commission of the EEC.
I believe that it would be of advantage to our people and to the people of the other eight member States if, long before the holding of direct elections to the European Parliament, the Mother of Parliaments took the time to examine in detail the procedures of the EEC, and I regret that we have not had an opportunity to do so before rising for the Christmas Recess. However, I hope that what I have said today will merit attention by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and that he will try to make good this omission when we return to the House after the recess.
5.9 p.m.
Mr. Tim Rathbone: Before I make my one brief point, I wish to add my support to what was said by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) in asking for the debate that he wanted. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not here to hear me voice my support, because it may surprise him. I give him my support because it may bring home to him and other Government supporters that there are many Opposition Members who also deplore apartheid but that right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House also believe that, despite all their drawbacks, the banks in this country, as in South Africa, help to build bridges between people rather than to burn them. The hon. Member's condemnation of Barclays Bank in South Africa was unwarranted, unnecessary and unfair.
I wish to add my support to the request by the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) for a debate on the EEC because it seems that hidden within his contribution was advocacy of direct elections to the European Parliament.
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Answers to Questions only this afternoon caused me and, I believe, other hon. Members to doubt the Government's solid commitment to introduce direct elections within the life of this Parliament.
I believe that instead of adjourning on Thursday we should sit on Friday and debate transport. The debate we were to have had on this subject last Session failed to take place, as even the Leader of the House will admit, because the Government were frightened to put in tellers for a vote on the motion for the Adjournment which preceded it on the Order Paper since they feared that they would lose the vote. The House therefore adjourned and the transport debate failed to take place.
The debate would be even more pertinent now than it was then because of the recently announced cuts in Government expenditure which encompassed, among other things, expenditure on transport. This is an important subject in all areas of the country, but nowhere is it more important than in Sussex. That county has drawn the short straw on road building programmes over the years from all Governments. Road schemes have been postponed in the county more often than elsewhere, and there is a delay in the crucially important scheme to relieve South Street, Lewes. That road is an integral part of the communications system to the thriving and expanding port of Newhaven.
It seems impossible to extract from the Secretary of State for Transport a decision about what the scheme will be and when it will start. The scheme is crucial to this part of the country. The Government have not yet given any indication of their policy on the ports, a policy which has assumed immense importance since they decided to cancel the Channel Tunnel.
In addition to the elements related to road transport we could also cover in a transport debate the question of rail transport. This point was well developed by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Mr. Marshall) earlier this week. These many other elements of transport would catch the interest of the House. If the Leader of the House cannot undertake to change the date of the Adjournment from Thursday to Friday, at least he could commit himself to providing time for a debate early in the new year.
5.14 p.m.
Mr. Ioan Evans: I agree with the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) in his support for my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) who said that we should have a debate on South Africa. Many of my hon. Friends would welcome the chance to find out where the Opposition stand on the condemnation of apartheid. If we were to have, as has been suggested, a two-day debate on foreign affairs we could spend one day on South African matters and discuss developments in Rhodesia and Namibia. It is important that we in this House, like the United Nations, should condemn what is taking place in South Africa and the activities of the Club of Ten by which South African finance is being used in our newspapers to whitewash an evil system.
It comes ill from the Conservatives to condemn the Government for not having a foreign affairs debate. When we recently debated the Queen's Speech the Opposition chose the subjects for debate each day. If they had wanted a foreign affairs debate they could have arranged one then.
The Government have also been criticised for not having a foreign affairs debate in the last year. The Opposition are free, however, to choose which subjects will be debated on supply days. If they wanted such a debate they could at least have provided a day for one.
I want to deal with the question of unemployment. Wales and Scotland are at present engaged in discussing devolution and the machinery of Government, but my constituents are more concerned about the prospects for employment and job opportunities. Obviously we cannot now expect a debate this side of Christmas unless we have it on Christmas Eve—
Mr. Rathbone: Why not?
Mr. Evans: If the hon. Member will suggest sitting on Christmas Eve I will support him. I hope, however, that the Government will consider making a statement before we rise. We have had an economic statement. The Chancellor referred to import controls, and while some of us do not argue for a siege economy, we believe that the Government
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could constructively consider the recommendations made to them by the joint deputation from the CBI and the TUC.
I hope that as soon as we resume after Christmas the Government will make a statement about whether—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is raising a matter which should be raised during supplementary questions on the Business Statement tomorrow. The hon. Member is not discussing the motion which is before the House.
Mr. Evans: I am arguing, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we should not go into recess before we have a statement from the Government. I am making these points now in case I am unsuccessful in doing so during supplementary questions on the Business Statement tomorrow.
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Michael Foot): Is my hon. Friend suggesting that he might not be able to catch my eye from Aberdare?
Mr. Evans: No. I realise that my right hon. Friend has deep anxieties about current unemployment. We might differ on the question of devolution, but I know that we heartily agree about unemployment.
Perhaps I may read a telegram that I received from a manufacturer in my constituency. It says:
"Deeply concerned about discontinuation of REP without prior warning. Serious repercussions of future employment in Welsh valleys unavoidable due to sudden substantial loss of revenue. Please call for full effect to be investigated before implementation to achieve at very least gradual phasing out to enable alternative financial arrangements to be made".
That telegram demonstrates the deep anxiety which is felt by manufacturing concerns.
The regional policies pursued in Britain have helped to maintain its economic unity because they have permitted jobs to be taken to the people in areas such as Wales, the North-East, the North-West and Scotland. I hope that the Government will seriously look at this question again.
This Christmas many people are unemployed and many others have a deep

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foreboding. I hope that the Government will give their highest priority to bringing forward proposals to create conditions of full employment. I hone that at least in the course of next year we shall see that we are altering our economic and industrial strategy so that we can improve manufacturing conditions. I hope that we shall stick to the Government's policy, which I understand is to divert the money that is being given to public administration to manufacturing industry. If we are to stop the regional employment premium and put those resources into additional administration, we shall be moving in reverse of what the Government intend. I hope that my right hon. Friend will take note.
5.21 p.m.
Mr. Paul Hawkins: I feel that it would be quite wrong, as would my constituents, if we adjourned without mentioning certain matters which are of the greatest importance to my constituency. Before doing so I take up one of the remarks of the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes), who I am sorry is no longer in the Chamber. The hon. Gentleman referred to Barclays Bank, which I always call a fine Norfolk company. In fact, it started in Norfolk. I do not think anyone in this place believes in apartheid. Surely it cannot be imagined that Barclays seeks to support apartheid. Surely it has acted to support Africa as a bulwark against Communism.
We have spent the whole of 1976 doing things that we should not have done, and, as the Bible says, leaving things undone that we should have done. The nation's problems have not been tackled. I urge that we should not adjourn without a debate on what I call an attack on the rural areas.
Reference has already been made to transport, which is extremely important in rural areas. I must also draw attention to what seems to be the Government's attack on agriculture by the appointment of the new Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Agriculture is our greatest industry, but it is losing valuable land which is being put under concrete. That land will never again produce food. Our present Minister does not seem to realise the importance to the industry of losing farming land. That is a matter
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that should be debated in the House before we adjourn.
Agriculture is our greatest industry. We could save millions of pounds worth of imports if we supported home agriculture, which is quite capable of producing foodstuffs for our consumers at reasonable prices. I am not talking about knock-down prices or about prices that are derisory in contrast to the prices found in the Common Market countries, our partners with whom we have to trade.
Mr. Lardinois came to Norfolk a month or so ago and pointed out that we shall go short of meat unless we are prepared to pay prices to the farming community that are nearly equal to our partners in the EEC. Italy already has a meatless week once a month. We are selling so many calves abroad that we shall not have enough to be fattened as fat cattle in this country. That means that we shall be short of beef in one or two years' time. If that happens, prices will increase and then we shall not have the money to buy from Argentina, Australia or elsewhere. In fact, I do not believe that there is much to come from those sources.
I am extremely worried by the way in which the Government have appeared to appoint a Minister who is no longer a Minister of Agriculture but a Minister of Food.
Again, the rural areas are being attacked by rate increases. The country districts are being discriminated against in favour of the London and metropolitan areas. I shall point out one way in which my constituents are already discriminated against, and I know that many Members who represent rural areas will agree with me. If my constituents want to seek a job outside their village, where they have to live because that is where the council houses were built to serve the farms which then needed more labour, they have to travel between 15 and 20 miles to go to a job and to get back. They start earlier than their neighbours and return later. This is costing my constituents between £5 and £7 a week. This is never taken into account when unemployment pay is fixed. It is not taken into account in income tax payments or in social benefits. The man who goes out of his village to get a better job, to do better for his country and family, is discriminated against. In the same way

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people in Norfolk are discriminated against in the payment of rates.
My constituents will be extremely worried if we do not debate the attack on our defence forces, which has led to an alarming lack of morale among some of my Royal Air Force constituents. The other day a technical sergeant told me that he had been instructed not to report to his station for a week except on pay day to draw his pay because there was no work for him to do. The Services are being cut back to such an extent that in some instances they are not allowed to have the petrol or ammunition that is necessary to undertake exercises. That being so, there was no job to be done by the technical sergeant.
But to come back to the most serious matter that it is necessary to debate—that is, the attack on the rural areas as opposed to the town areas. My constituents produce food for the rest of the country. Only about 3 per cent. of the country's work force is employed on the land. During the drought this summer the rest of the country began to realise that the job done by the 3 per cent. is extremely important. If we should have a time when farmers are starved of money so that they put their land down to grass instead of producing crops, we as a nation shall starve. That will be the consequence if we do not support agriculture sufficiently.
5.28 p.m.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich. East (Mr. Snape), who is in juxtaposition to my right hon. Friend the Lord President, will give my right hon. Friend a nudge and tell him that we want a debate on transport—namely, the debate that we did not get at an earlier stage.
It is with difficulty and characteristic self-restraint that for the first time in 15 years I somehow resist the temptation, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to follow your advice urging someone to argue that we should have a much longer recess. If the truth be known, the dropping of a certain piece of legislation would not cause me to grieve.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman but I was not thinking in terms of extending the recess for a whole year.
Mr. Dalyell: No, just until such time as the daffodils come out in the West Country and in Ebbw Vale and the snows melt in Scotland. That would be sufficient. I should busy myself in West Lothian and Brussels and doubtless the Government would busy themselves in more productive areas.
I give the undertaking that there will be no filibustering on my part when we consider the Bill. I shall say nothing that I think is irrelevant and there will be no unnecessary repetition.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I do not know why the hon. Gentleman is so anxious not to have the debate. He anticipates the debate and starts telling us what contribution he will make. He should tell us why we should not adjourn for the Christmas Recess.
Mr. Dalyell: What I have said does not mean that there will be no long speeches, since there is so much to discuss.
I should like to talk quietly to my right hon. Friend the Lord President to suggest why he should make a statement before the House adjourns. I do not want to abuse the House by getting onto the substance of the Scotland and Wales Bill. but the matter is a bit difficult, because my right hon. Friend has a Jekyll and Hyde rôle. As Leader of the House, he should tell himself that as Secretary of State for Devolution he should make a statement, before we rise, on the mechanics of the proposed referendum on devolution. How much will it cost? Who will pay? Will public funds go to umbrella organisations? If so, to which umbrella organisations will they go? Will the "Scotland is British" organisation, for example, qualify as an umbrella organisation? What will be the attitude on free votes? If there is a referendum, the participants in it can hardly be muzzled at earlier stages.
I should like to make it clear, however, that I have had nothing but kindness and generosity from my party on this subject. The Whips have perhaps been more decent than Whips should be to dissidents.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I should like also to extend my kindness to the hon. Gentleman from the Chair. But he knows full well that the matters he is

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raising will all be relevant during the Bill's Committee stage, when they will be discussed at length and most thoroughly.
Mr. Dalyell: Before the House adjourns my right hon. Friend should, in his capacity as Lord President, ask my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister the following question: "Is it right and sensible that a Lord President who is also chairman of the Cabinet's Legislation Committee should at the same time carry possibly the heaviest of all burdens as a Secretary of State?"
We should have a statement about ministerial representation. I am not one for making personal allegations of any kind, but those who sat through virtually every speech in the four-day Second Reading debate noticed that the Government Front Bench was denuded of Cabinet Ministers. That should not have happened. Very often it was populated by relatively junior Ministers—no discredit to them—or a Whip was standing in. I in no way attack the Whips, but on a major constitutional issue members of the Cabinet should not be constantly absent they might learn the ugly reality of devolution.
I understand very well that my right hon. Friend the Lord President has many other key jobs, particularly as chairman of Cabinet committees. That was the undoing of Dick Crossman in that position when he undertook Lords reform, compared with which devolution is a much heavier burden.
Therefore, I ask, first, for consideration of a statement about representation on the Government Front Bench during the passage of this vital constitutional Bill. Secondly, in particular, what representation will there be of the Law Officers, not only the Scottish Law Officers but the English Law Officers? It was argued during the passage of the European Communities Act that they should be present, and throughout these proceedings the Attorney-General or the Solicitor-General should be required by the Cabinet to be present.
There is one thing on which I think all Members can be agreed, whatever their views on the Bill. It is that the House should be taken seriously on this matter, and that does not mean Ministers
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merely asserting that they have read Hansard for the previous day or previous week. Taking the House seriously during the passage of this major constitutional Bill means the physical presence of senior members of the Cabinet on the Front Bench from time to time.
5.36 p.m.
Mr. Hector Monro (Dumfries): I shall not take up any of the points made by the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), because time is desperately short, except to comment that perhaps it is appropriate for a pro-devolutionist to follow an anti-devolutionist.
There are several reasons why I believe the House should not adjourn for such a long break. The basic reason is that in the past Session and in the current Session the Lord President has been trying to push through far too much legislation that is not appropriate to the problems of our time. One of those problems is the high level of unemployment. The detailed figures not being available because of industrial action, we can but guess, but I believe that in Scotland there are now 150,000 to 155,000 unemployed. That is nearly double the October 1974 figure, when the Government retained office on all sorts of promises to improve the employment position. Since then we have had eight or nine Budgets, and nobody, except perhaps himself, has any confidence that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has it right yet.
It is obviously wrong to leave Westminster unless we have encouraging news about employment trends in the coming weeks. There have been endless messages of hope, but they are wearing thin. Whether we have advance factories or promises from the Scottishs Development Agency, we must all feel grave concern that unemployment will not improve between now and the spring.
Mr. Robert Hughes rose—
Mr. MonroI shall not give way.
Secondly, we are desperately concerned about leaving London when the fishing crisis is as serious as it is. The Government have failed to push home the policies that they should be adopting in the interests of fishermen, whether relating to Icelandic waters or to the problems

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of our inshore fishermen. These have a particular impact in my constituency, where we have an important processing factory.
Thirdly, we should not adjourn until we see a glimmer of hope in regard to inflation, which seems to be increasing beyond today's 15 per cent. I share the views of hon. Members on both sides of the House about the cost of transport in rural areas, including the cost of petrol, diesel fuel and rail tickets. These serious matters should be discussed before we break up.
Fourthly, there is the serious rates burden. We are to debate rates later tonight, but we shall have to decide on this motion before we have a chance to make clear our views on the impact of rates on our constituents.
Fifthly, the House should not adjourn without a debate on the Flowers Report on nuclear energy. During Monday night we had a chance to talk about our nuclear power programme and nuclear waste, but we need a full day's debate at reasonable hours on what is one of the major issues facing the country.
All in all, it is not a happy Christmas for the Government or the vast majority of our people. We should not go away without the Lord President's saying something much more helpful about the Government's policies, particularly on economic matters.
5.40 p.m.
Mr. James Sillars: I, too, argue that we should not adjourn tomorrow for the recess—in case my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has not been persuaded even by the eloquence of my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell). It is incumbent upon the Government to resolve first a number of serious questions arising from the decision in principle to hold a referendum on the Scottish Assembly.
When the Government come to reflect on that decision, I think they will realise that they have raised more problems than they believe they are solving. I refer to correspondence between my right hon. Friend and myself on the question of the referendum. In a letter on 14th October he said, referring to the referendum on British membership of the EEC:
"the Scottish vote was in line with that of the rest of the country. The answer given was
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not the one for which you and I campaigned, but all of us, I believe, have to accept it as final."
But the point is whether that referendum was really binding and final, and whether the referendum on an Assembly is to open up to the Scottish people the question of continued membership. If the EEC referendum was not binding, this second referendum offers the Scottish people a chance not only of opting out of the United Kingdom but of opting out of the Common Market, which is the double-take of separation.
If the Common Market referendum was final and binding and all other referenda are to be within the context of the EEC, the question of independence could not be defined as separatist in any circumstances by any Government, because if the Scottish people were to say, "Yes" to independent representation within the EEC they would not be so much leaving England as joining with England in a new partnership along with the other countries in the Community. The highly emotive phrases that one would expect in the referendum campaign such as "breaking off", "rupturing trade between Scotland and England", "separation", "Scotland going into isolation", or "Scotland going off on its own" would all be invalidated as nonsensical propaganda.
There is another problem besides the question of Scotland's status within the Community. It revolves round the question 'whose oil is it?" If the Government put the question to the Scottish people, "Do you want to be independent?" they have to define very clearly—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have already drawn the attention of the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) to the position. I think that the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars) is in exactly the same difficulty. This is not a matter which will take place during the recess. There will be a Committee stage of the whole House when all these matters which are being raised will be adequately discussed.
Mr. Sillars: The substance of my argument, within the rules of order, is that I believe that these matters should be tackled by the Government before we come to the Committee stage. That is

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why I do not think that the House should adjourn for the recess until the Government have addressed themselves to the principle and the details arising from the principle. The point I was making is that if the independence question is set, the Government must define what they mean by "Scotland".
The Government cannot say to the Scottish people "You can have the waters off the West Coast round about the Minch and further west because they contain only herring but the waters off the East Coast are not Scottish because underneath is oil." There is a range of considerable problems for the Government if they are tempted, as it were, to go for the separatist question, and the Government should address themselves to them before the House rises.
I undertook, Mr. Deputy Speaker, not to speak beyond five minutes. You will be delighted that I have managed it in four.
5.44 p.m.
Mr. George Younger: I apologise to the Leader of the House for the fact that my right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Pym) cannot be present. My right hon. Friend asked me to deputise for him, which I will do to the best of my ability.
I do not suppose that the Leader of the House is surprised that so many hon. Members on both sides of the House have been anxious to complain about the numerous different matters for which it has been impossible for the Government to find time to discuss in this Session so far. All those who have spoken have, for various reasons, suggested that it would be inappropriate, in view of these omissions in the Government's programme, to adjourn for the period specified in the motion.
These complaints are not surprising because, by almost common consent, the business of the Government during this year has been uniquely badly mismanaged. We have spent an inordinate amount of time throughout the year discussing matters of little interest to the general public, and, indeed, of little interest to many hon. Members—matters of Socialist programmes which have passed through various manifestos and so on but which have raised no spark of
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enthusiasm in the country. They have consumed an enormous amount of time of the House and have involved a great deal of money which, we are now bitterly discovering, could well have been spent on many more important things.
That is why my hon. Friend and learned Friend the Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) began by referring to the unsatisfactory position with regard to the discussion of foreign affairs. I wonder whether we are right to go off for the recess leaving the discussion of foreign affairs in the immensely unsatisfactory situation in which it is. According to the researches I have been able to make—they may not be complete—in this year we have had in Government time only one day for the general discussion of foreign affairs—that is leaving aside such matters as discussion of Rhodesia sanctions orders and the rest, which are particular matters.
My hon. and learned Friend pointed out that the very important question of the situation between Greece and Turkey as it affects Cyprus has lasted through almost the whole of this year without there having been a proper debate on the subject. I think that hon. Members on both sides will agree that this subject greatly influences and interests many of our constituents. Many of us see people who have relatives in Cyprus and are extremely concerned. It is regrettable that the Government's overstretched and overcrowded programme for a lot of irrelevancies has squeezed out the question of Cyprus. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will consider this very carefully before he just goes off home.
The hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) raised the question of the disturbing news in the last few hours about the new arrests taking place in the Soviet Union of Jews who were trying to hold a seminar. This, again, is a matter that concerns many of our constituents, some of whom have relatives involved, and who have a very strong interest in trying to keep alight some sort of freedom in the Soviet Union. I hope that the Leader of the House will take seriously the hon. and learned Gentleman's request that the Government should find some way of expressing clearly and strongly to the Soviet Union our concern—in all parties—whether these new reports are correct,

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and our additional concern that this is precisely the sort of thing that we thought the Helsinki Agreement was supposed to prevent from happening.
While we are on the question of the need for foreign affairs to be considered before we rise for the recess I should mention the remarks of the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) about the European Parliament. We have been somewhat surprised that at this time in the Session we still have not seen the Bill introducing direct elections. We had expected to have had it by now. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to assure us that it will be coming soon, because there should be full opportunity for studying it before it comes for discussion in the House.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take seriously these comments about the unsatisfactory state of discussion of foreign affairs.
Mr. Ioan Evans: Would the hon. Gentleman address himself to the fact that during the debate on the Queen's Speech there was opportunity for the Opposition to provide a Supply Day for a foreign affairs debate, but that there was no request from the Opposition through the usual channels? Was that omission perhaps because the Shadow Foreign Secretary was being moved out and his successor being moved in?
Mr. Younger: I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman is on a good point there. In the first place, I believe that so far in the Session we have not been offered any Supply Days, although I may be wrong; but it is not in any case satisfactory to say, when we refer to certain matters which have not been debated, that the Opposition should have raised them on Supply Days. I am sorry to have to make this point, but the Government have been making such an imperial mess on every other aspect of their policy that there have been 10 different candidates for every Supply Day. The Opposition cannot be expected to give up those important days for matters for which the Government ought to provide their own time. I hope that the Leader of the House will assure us that he regards it as part of the Government's responsibility to make a reasonable allocation of Government time for the discussion of foreign affairs.
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We had a most important and interesting contribution from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) about his great concern at the way in which the Government have been dealing with the implementation of the Insolvency Act. I shall not go over the points that he made, but I hope very much that the Leader of the House has received advice about the questions raised my my hon. and learned Friend, and I hope that he will directly answer the particular question. Can the order which has been introduced in the unfortunate circumstances described by my hon. and learned Friend please now be withdrawn in order to give a chance for further discussions to take place and to try to get the Act off to a better footing? Its passage was conducted very much in discussion between the parties involved, and the events that have been described are very unfortunate.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes), in a very sincere but totally illogical contribution, mentioned the question of Barclays National Bank in South Africa and its shareholdings and investments.
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman will find on either side of the House anyone who has any time for apartheid as a system. I think that it is generally agreed throughout this country, and by all parties in the House, that the system of apartheid is one that we do not support or agree with, and that we should try our best to persuade the people of South Africa to avoid apartheid.
However, I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he should try to find out more about the facts on the question of investment by Barclays National Bank before he comes to the House to talk about it. As I understand it—no doubt I shall be corrected if I am wrong—this is a South African company, albeit with its ownership being in a holding company in this country. It is a South African company, and, as such, it is obliged to hold a certain percentage of its deposits from the public in a certain number of particular prescribed national institutions in South Africa, and they include Government and quasi-Government and municipal stocks, and loan stocks issued by universities, local authorities and so on. What has

727
happened in this case, as I understand it, is that Barclays National Bank, which is managed on a day-to-day basis not in this country but in South Africa, has decided to switch some of its investments from one of those types of holdings to another.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is going into far too much detail in answering the debate; we are not debating that matter. I want to hear his views on the question of the Christmas Adjournment.
Mr. Younger: I shall comply with your wishes, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I thought that as the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North had made a number of points, it would be right in the interests of good debate that another point of view should be put forward. I am sure that you will tell me if I am in any way out of order, and I shall gladly bow to any ruling that you make. It is sufficient for me to finish on this point by saying to the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North that this is a matter of investment, and it is not one in which the British Government have any responsibility, and not one which makes any difference either way towards approval or disapproval of apartheid. For that reason, I do not believe that this is a very good reason for suggesting that we should not pass the motion.
Mr. Robert Hughes rose——
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Had the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) resumed his seat?
Mr. Younger: No, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I had given way to the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I must have been mistaken.
Mr. Hughes: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) for giving way, especially as he has said that I ought not to come to the House without being aware of the facts. He should know that the facts of the matter, as I acknowledged earlier—and I accept his viewpoint about the stocks—are that there is absolutely nothing that compels Barclays National Bank in South Africa to invest in the fighting fund for apartheid, and that it is
728
a propaganda exercise to boost South African morale. Barclays has not used as a defence the suggestion that it is compelled to make this investment.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I shall not allow a debate on the situation in South Africa on this motion, which concerns the Adjournment of the House for the Christmas Recess.
Mr. Younger: I am happy to pass on from that matter now. I have made the points that I wanted to make, as has the hon. Gentleman.
Another very important matter which has been raised is the question of why we are rising for the recess without having a long-awaited debate on transport. This is assuming a high degree of importance now because I understand that the Government are committed to producing a White Paper on this subject in the spring. It would be very unfortunate if they were to produce that White Paper when the consultative document, which we have had for some months, has not been properly and fully debated in the House. I wonder, therefore, whether it is right that the House should rise without that matter being discussed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) mentioned the very serious situation that has arisen in the last few days as a result of the further defence cuts the Government are introducing as part of their package and the extremely unsatisfactory nature of the reason given, which has been purely that in any serious expenditure cuts defence must carry some of them. That is the attitude of a blind man with a pin. It is wrong for a Government responsible for this country's defence to carry out these expenditure reductions in a completely haphazard manner. They might as well be filling in football pools as working out defence expenditure in this most irresponsible way.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) raised a number of important points, which we would greatly have liked to debate before rising for the recess. There is the situation of rising unemployment, which affects many people all over the country, and the grave difficulties into which all of us are put by the fact that we cannot have accurate figures on this subject because those employed

729
in compiling them are in some dispute which makes them unable to provide the Government with the figures that they require. It is ironic, at least for Opposition Members, that it should be in the middle of this appalling level of unemployment, the highest since the war and further, that the Government find themselves miraculously unable to produce the figures. This is not a happy situation. I hope that the Leader of the House will assure us that maximum efforts are being made to give full information on this serious matter.
There is no time to go any further into the equally serious problem facing our fishing industry. This was discussed after the statement made yesterday by the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I could not possibly agree to the motion without registering once again our very deep concern for the fishing industry and for the many communities around the country who will be affected, directly or indirectly, by the continued delay in coming to an agreement about a new fisheries policy, and the effects of the unilateral creation of the 200-mile zone by some countries, and now ours, from 1st January.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take to his colleagues the message that we expect the Government to put at the top of their priorities from the New Year onwards the putting of proper pressure on their colleagues in the Community, and upon those others who are involved outside the Community, to see that the new regulations are agreed as soon as possible and that proper arrangements are made for our fishermen to be properly protected, because at present they have very little confidence that the Government have realised the increased policing difficulty that will arise with the much greater limits that we shall have to cover.
Finally, I return to the point with which I started. This has been an extremely unsatisfactory Session in every way from a parliamentary point of view. I hope that the Government have learned their lesson this time. The Government have forced through vast amounts of unpalatable and hopelessly partisan legislation with a majority that has dwindled at times to practically nothing. I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman, of
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all people, would have known that. If he did not know it before, I hope that he has learned it the hard way now and will consider that matter before we asks us to rise for the Christmas Recess.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Lord President.
6.0 p.m.
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Michael Foot)rose——
Mr. Adley: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I point out to you, with respect, that some of my hon. Friends and I have sat in the Chamber since the beginning of this short debate? Is it your intention, after the Lord President of the Council has spoken, to accept a closure motion even though some of us have sat here throughout the debate?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The question of choice of speakers is entirely a matter for the Chair. I have no intentions. I do not know what will happen after the Lord President of the Council has resumed his seat.
Mr. Foot: The hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) began with a most courteous apology for the absence of his right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Pym). The hon. Gentleman did not need to apologise, and I mean no reflection on his right hon. Friend in saying that. I fully understand the reasons for the absence of the right hon. Gentleman from the debate.
I hope that the hon. Member for Ayr will excuse me if I do not enter into an elaborate debate on the question whether the business of the Session has been appropriately conducted. I am sure that I shall satisfy the hon. Gentleman in the period after the recess when we shall be discussing the excellent Bill on devolution, which I know he greets with such impartial enthusiasm. I am therefore glad that the hon. Gentleman is looking forward to the next part of the Session.
The hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) raised, in particular, a question about Cyprus. Her Majesty's Government, in concert with her European partners and American ally, have been engaged in sustained and Vigorous diplomatic

731
activity to secure the resumption of the inter-communal talks on Cyprus. Our aims are to support the efforts of the United Nations Secretary-General, to foster continuing and substantive exchanges between the two communities, and to impress on all concerned the need for flexibility in the conduct of these negotiations. Her Majesty's Government earnestly hope that these efforts will soon bear fruit but believe that they are best pursued in confidence. I see no advantage in having a debate on the matter at the present juncture.
The hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West quoted remarks made by Lord Caradon in another place. I am sure that he was wise in the choice of person he quoted, but I have nothing to add to what I have said already.
I agree with hon. Members who have said that they would like the House to have a full day's debate on foreign affairs. I appreciate that we should have one at an early date to discuss the questions on South Africa referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) and other subjects which have been raised. Like many hon. Members, I am sorry that in recent weeks we have not had the opportunity to debate foreign affairs. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Evans) rightly said, the choice of subjects for debate in the House does not rest solely with the Government; it rests with the Opposition as well.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) raised important questions on foreign affairs. I think that these matters were dealt with at Question Time today by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. He stressed that the British Government have raised strongly with representatives of the Soviet Government the question of civil liberties whenever opportunities have arisen in this country, in the United Nations, or in other places where we meet. In making those representations, the Soviet Government should understand that the Foreign Secretary has been speaking for the whole of the House and for the whole country, and he will continue to make those representations in the way that he thinks most effective. I believe that most hon. Members will agree that he has raised them effectively in the
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past and that he will continue to do that in future.
The hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) referred to the remarks made by Mr. Bukovsky about the consequences and events which followed Helsinki. We must take into account what Mr. Bukovsky says. Perhaps we should also take into account the views of the Government and of others about the possibilities since Helsinki.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leicester, West referred also to the telephone installation question which he had raised on another occasion. I must, with diffidence, agree with you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that if a subject could have been raised in a debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill, that is perhaps a reason why it is not an appropriate subject to raise in a debate such as this. The practice of the Post Office of charging deposits in some cases before installing telephones is designed to protect the generality of subscribers who would otherwise have to pay higher charges to cover bad debts. The Post Office has for some time been seeking alternative methods of dealing with the problem, and discussions to this end are taking place. I am sure that both the Post Office and others will take careful note of the strongly held views of my hon. and learned Friend, and this discussion may assist in that purpose.
The hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) certainly raised a matter which came strictly within the rules of a debate on the Adjournment motion, if I may be so presumptuous thereby to cast any conceivable doubt on the remarks of other hon. Members. No one could say that the matter that the hon. and learned Gentleman raised was not one of urgency, in view of the dates he cited. From my experience of debate in the House, I say that it is a most unwise hon. Member who does not take note of what the hon. and learned Gentleman says because often it needs to be noted very carefully. The hon. and learned Gentleman went on to say how innocent he was. That was the only part of his speech which did not have the same familiar ring of truth about it as the rest of it. I take careful note of what the hon. and learned Gentleman said.

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The hon. and learned Member raised the question of the bankruptcy amendment rules. I should like to acknowledge how consistently helpful he was during the passage of the Insolvency Act, but I regret, at any rate on the advice that I have received—I shall say something further about that—that I cannot offer him any comfort about the subject he raised.
The erosion of money values since 1915 has brought within the framework of bankruptcy an ever-increasing number of small and unproductive cases, and the increase in the deposits payable on the bankruptcy petitions cannot be delayed any longer because of the completely unacceptable burden of work which this imposes on the staff of the Insolvency Service.
I understand that the Government's position on this matter has been clear for a long time. It is not true to say that we have moved stealthily or have attempted to deceive anyone. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade made this clear to the hon. and learned Member for Southport as long ago as June 1976 when he wrote to him as follows:
"I ought to add, however, that we shall not be able to delay until the Committee has been set up the amendment to the bankruptcy rules which will give effect to the increased deposits required to be paid on the presentation of bankruptcy petitions as these are crucial features in reducing the present excessive strain on the Insolvency Service."
Therefore, the Government's intentions have been clear for a long time and I cannot accept that this matter should delay the Christmas Adjournment. However, I promise the hon. and learned Member for Southport that, in view of what he has said today, I shall make further investigations and if there are other aspects of the matter to which Government attention should be given we shall give it and I shall ensure that we communicate directly with the hon. and learned Gentleman to make certain that we are dealing properly with it.
I replied in general terms to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North when he raised, the other day, the subject to which he referred today. I believe that many of the questions that he raised would figure in a general debate on foreign affairs, and I can understand the desire of the House for such a debate. I
734
shall not enter into the dispute which arose between my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) on the attitude of the different parties to apartheid. There is no doubt about the Government's attitude. We regard apartheid as utterly evil. We believe that further steps have always to be examined in order to ensure that the economic support given to apartheid cannot be sustained. It is in that spirit that my hon. Friend put his case to the House.
The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) and others spoke of the appalling unemployment problem. Many people throughout the country have expressed anxiety about the unemployment total this Christmas, despite the fact that, owing to industrial action, we cannot have the actual figures. Undoubtedly this problem causes great anxiety all over the country, as I know from my constituency and from the way in which these problems have built up in other constituencies.
The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed raised the subject of possible redundancies in the concrete pipe industry and cited a letter from a firm in his constituency. I understand that the six months' moratorium just announced relates to lettings in regard to construction contracts and not to routine maintenance work. There is no cessation of work on existing water authority contracts. I assure my hon. Friend that the Government are aware of the consequences of the moratorium and are doing everything that can be done to alleviate the situation. Hon. Members can raise with the Department of Employment immediate questions involving threatened redundancies in their areas. I am sure that the Department will do what it can to assist.
There are some cases in which temporary employment subsidy can assist. The subject of the regional employment premium was mentioned, and the removal of the premium under the recent Government measures. One of the reasons why we felt it was necessary to consider the removal of the premium related to the considerable growth in the operation of the temporary employment supplement, which has proved to be of far wider significance in preventing unemployment than many people appreciated

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when the temporary employment subsidy arrangements were originally introduced. That is one way in which assistance can be given to firms in difficulty. In that case and in others I am sure that hon. Members will wish urgently to approach the Departments of Industry and Employment to see how they can assist.
The hon. Member for Lewes asked about the possibility of a transport debate, and criticised the fact that we had not had a debate recently. Other hon. Members underlined the desirability of such a debate. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) also asked about this subject in one of the more pertinent parts of his speech. We hope that there will soon be a debate on transport, possibly in the week when we return. There is to be a business announcement tomorrow. I cannot say for certain, but I hope that we shall be able to have such a debate in the week that the House returns. I hope hon. Members will realise that we have tried to satisfy demands from many of my hon. Friends, and indeed from Opposition Members.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare mentioned the Club of Ten and the article in the Observer on the subject. That was an article of great significance and should be examined carefully. The implications can be far-reaching. I hope that I have covered that aspect in reply to my hon. Friend's point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) commented on the operation of the Common Market Commissioners. I should stray outside the rules of order if I were to comment on that subject.
My hon. Friend and others also mentioned the subject of direct elections. I wish to make clear to the House that there will be no direct elections to the European Assembly before we meet on 10th January. I do not believe that topic need give any anxiety to my hon. Friends as to what will happen between now and when we reassemble.
Mr. John Lee: May we have an assurance that there will be no maturing of thoughts in the Government's bosom before 10th January about the application of a guillotine
736
since some of us intend to talk at great length on that Bill should there be any danger of its becoming law?
Mr. Foot: I can assure my hon. Friend that any thoughts I have do not mature in my bosom. They are entirely the product of another part of my anatomy. I also assure my hon. Friend that we shall proceed properly and sedately in these matters. We shall have proper debates on all these subjects. There is no reason why there should be any anxieties about these matters before we reassemble in January.
Mr. Ioan Evans: My right hon. Friend mentioned 10th January—but he did not say of which year.
Mr. Foot: We may well have another debate of this character in December 1977. If I can give the same answer to my hon. Friend as I have given now, nobody will be more satisfied than I.
I turn to the speech of the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins), whose remarks covered comments made by other Opposition Members who, throughout the last few months, have been demanding public expenditure cuts. However many of them devoted a considerable proportion of their remarks today to reasons why there should not be individual cuts in expenditure. They should sort out some of these matters before they seek to attack the Government. These general questions cannot be dealt with in an Adjournment debate. Many were covered in yesterday's debate. Many more will be covered when we reassemble in January 1977.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian raised the general subject of the referendum, as did the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars). I agree that such important questions must be carefully thought out, but that will not be achieved in propositions presented to the House either before Christmas or immediately after it. We shall provide proper time for these matters to be decently debated in the House and for the House to reach conclusions on them. But when we come to these debates, everybody will agree that the Government have provided a proper way of deciding these matters. We believe that if the settlement that is to arise from our devolution proposals is to be satisfactory, it will be all the better,

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and we shall accept it all the more clearly, if the people of Scotland and Wales have an opportunity to pronounce on the matter. I agree with the hon. Member for South Ayrshire that the form and manner in which that occurs is a matter of major importance. I assure him that the Government approach these matters in that sense.
I believe that I have touched on almost every question that has been raised in this debate although I cannot say that I have relieved every anxiety in the minds of every hon. Member. I believe that I can say with some diffidence that my speech has been even more in order than some other contributions to this debate.
Mr. Walter Harrison (Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household)rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.
Question accordingly put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House at its rising tomorrow do adjourn till Monday 10th January.

RATE SUPPORT GRANT
6.20 p.m.
The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Peter Shore): I beg to move.
That the Rate Support Grant Order 1976, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern): With this we may take the other support grant orders for England and Wales.
Mr. Shore: I understand that the separate order relating to Scotland will be debated when we conclude this debate.
The main order relates to the rate support grant settlement for 1977–78. This will inevitably be my main theme today. I shall begin with a few words about the two increase orders. The first increase order relates to the financial year 1975–76. The Exchequer grants for that year were originally determined at November 1974 prices. We have already made some adjustment, last year, to these grants to take account of changes in costs up to November 1975. We have now decided to accept for grant further increases in costs during the remainder of 1975–76, totalling £77 million.
The grant for 1975–76 was 66½ per cent. That percentage also applies to the increase order. After deducting specific grants, the amount of further rate support grant and supplementary grants to be paid out through this increase order will be £49 million. The additional needs element will be distributed by the same formula as was used to distribute the original 1975–76 grant.
I turn now to the current year, 1976–77, for which the Government propose that an increase order be made for additional rate support and supplementary grants to authorities of £388 million in respect of increased costs since the main order was made last December.
The House will no doubt already be aware that this sum has been affected by two decisions which the Government have taken in the course of the past year. The first, announced at the time the last rate support grant settlement was made by my predecessor, was that the grant total should be subject to a cash limit. This cash limit, which was based on the latest estimate of inflation at the time, would

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have been exceeded if the Government had paid grant on all the claims for additional expenditure made by authorities. The Government have carefully reviewed the position, as they promised they would do, but have come to the conclusion that, in view of the economic circumstances now prevailing and their general policy on cash limits the cash limit must stand.
The second decision that the Government took during the year was to limit the total amount of the increase in grant to a figure of £50 million less than the amount calculated as a percentage of increased expenditure which the Government were prepared to take into account. We took this decision in the light of the knowledge that local authorities had raised revenue from rates which was, together with their balances, sufficient to finance expenditure proposed by them of £400 million above the level accepted by the Government and authorities in the rate support grant settlement for 1976–77. We have looked carefully at the position again when considering whether the decision must stand.
Sir John Hall: Is it not true that this way of dealing with the problems means that those authorities that have tried their best to follow the guidelines laid down by the right hon. Gentleman have been penalised in the same way as those who have made no attempt to follow the guidelines?
Mr. Shore: The hon. Gentleman has made that point on other occasions. I shall deal with this general question a little later. Of course, the hon. Gentleman is right. I accept all the premises that led him to that conclusion. It does mean that we are dealing collectively, rather than individually, with local authorities in seeking to reduce the amount of grant paid under the increase order for 1976–77.
The rate support grant settlement for 1977–78 has been a particularly difficult one to propose. The settlement involves a fresh judgment each year on a number of different points. These include the level of current expenditure for which local government should plan, the extent to which this expenditure should be financed by the taxpayer or the ratepayer, and whether some of it can be financed
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from authorities' own balances. We also have to be sure that the grant is distributed with proper regard to the expenditure needs of areas and the ways these needs may be changing. On many of these issues there is no simple arithmetical answer; it is a question of judgment and priorities. But in 1977–78 our room for manoeuvre, because of our severe economic difficulties, is so limited that the judgments have been more difficult than ever. I do not expect everyone to agree with my judgments but they have been made in the belief that they provide for a settlement fair both to local authorities and ratepayers and right for our economic situation.
I turn first to expenditure. The level of relevant expenditure I propose for the settlement, £11,717 million, will require local authorities to reduce their current expenditure in real terms in 1977–78 by around 1·6 per cent. compared with what they are now estimated to be spending in 1976–77. This level of expenditure is in line with the Government's original plans for 1977–78 set out in the last White Paper on Public Expenditure, Cmnd. 6393, published in February of this year. The only significant modification of the plans incorporated in that White Paper has been the switch of about £125 million from capital to current expenditure. This was a change endorsed by the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance.
Mr. Timothy Raison: Will the Secretary of State clear up one point arising from the Chancellor's statement of a few days ago and a subsequent statement by the Secretary of State for Education, when it was said that the Government believe that the amount of money spent on the administration of school meals should be reduced? Can the Secretary of State explain whether this has any bearing on either the rate support grant or the Public expenditure figures and if not how is it meant to be implemented?
Mr. Shore: It will have an effect on the rate support grant settlement. As I recall it, my right hon. Friend spoke of a figure—I think a saving of £20 million—in education current expenditure. Given the settlement that I am proposing, that would affect the rate support grant expenditure by something in

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the order of £12 million. We shall have to make adjustments for that sum. I propose to make those at a later stage in the increase orders.
I was explaining the only change in the original figures in the White Paper. That has been brought about by the shift from capital to current expenditure. By adhering in this way to their published plans, the Government are not, therefore, presenting local authorities with an unexpected level of expenditure in 1977–78. All authorities will have seen the White Paper. They will also all have had, in May of this year, a joint departmental circular—Circular 45/76—setting out current expenditure figures for local authorities up to 1979–80.
There have been many demands for slashing reductions in local government current expenditure. This settlement does not provide for slashing cuts and would be wrong, in my view, if it did. Such reductions could be achieved only at the expense of severe reductions in social and other services and extensive redundancies.
We should consider, too, the fall in the rate of growth in local authority current expenditure. Local authority expenditure was rising dramatically in the years up to 1974–75—8 per cent. in 1972–73, 9 per cent. in 1973–74 and nearly 10 per cent. in 1974–75. Since then we have seen the rate of increase progressively reduced. The growth, at nearly 10 per cent. in 1974–75, was halved in 1975–76 to around 5 per cent. and to under 2 per cent. in 1976–77. For 1977–78 we are now looking, not for an increase, but for a reduction of about 1½ per cent. I cannot see, at present, that it would help the economic wellbeing of this country to pursue a faster rate of change.
We are therefore proceeding in a firm but orderly way which allows local authorities to adjust with minimum cost and dislocation to their new financial position. Indeed, I have been impressed—I speak with only eight months' experience behind me—in my contacts with local authority leaders by the helpful and responsible attitude they have brought to all our discussions. They did not welcome the settlement. But I know they are determined to play their part in keeping public expenditure in line with the Government plans.
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I have, of course—here I take up the point made by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Sir J. Hall) a moment ago—thought carefully about whether I should discriminate between authorities in 1977–78 on the basis of their expenditure in 1976–77. I think that it would be wrong to do so, for two reasons. First, it would be entirely to misconceive the basis of the proposed settlement. It is not based on retribution for past alleged misdeeds. It reflects a judgment on how best the Government's expenditure objective for 1977–78 can be achieved. This inevitably takes account of the resources which local authorities as a whole should already have at their disposal.
Second, to attempt to relate the settlement to the action of individual authorities would raise serious practical difficulties. The needs of authorities, and therefore their need to spend, will vary. We do not have sufficient information at national level to estimate the needs of individual authorities sufficiently precisely for use as a basis for discrimination, and even if we did there would be a radical break in the relationship between local and central government and an end to effective local democracy. We should perforce have to use some more or less arbitrary formula, and this might well cause more injustice than it would resolve.
Any attempt to discriminate would involve the Government closely in the day-to-day affairs of local authorities. This was not contemplated when the Local Government Act 1974 was passed by our Conservative predecessors, and as a consequence—I must tell the House this frankly—new legislation would be required. Even if we thought that it was the right thing to do and if we thought that we could achieve greater justice, it would require new legislation.
Mr. Tim Sainsbury: The right hon. Gentleman referred to a more or less arbitrary formula. Does he not regard the multiple regression analysis by which the needs element is allocated as a more or less arbitrary formula?
Mr. Shore: I know that it has been criticised, but I do not think that it is an arbitrary formula. Indeed, it is in many ways, I suppose, a more refined way of trying to define needs than we

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have had in the past. I claim no particular authorship for it; it is something else which we picked up from the wisdom and inheritance left by right hon. and hon. Members opposite. All I can say is that I shall have a further word about it, if I may, as I go along and deal with the question of the distribution as between different authorities and, above all, the needs element.
As the House knows, the Government were deeply concerned that their early call for a standstill in current expenditure in 1976–77 was not reflected in the first returns of expenditure made by local authorities in April this year. The House will recall that these first returns indicated an intention to spend over £400 million in excess of the Government's expenditure plans in the White Paper, Cmnd. 6393. However, following discussions with the consultative council, and with the support of the local authority associations, authorities responded well to later joint departmental circulars issued in May and August of this year, which reiterated the Government's continued commitment to the figures set out in the February White Paper.
The result has been successive downward revisions of the amount of excess expenditure. A second return of expenditure in July 1976 indicated an excess, at November 1975 prices, of about £250 million, and later evidence in the course of the rate support grant negotiations indicated a figure of about £170 million. I should add that a modest saving on capital expenditure also is expected during this year.
The gap between local authority intentions and Government expectations may not yet have been finally closed, but overall the change of spending intentions revealed so far represents an impressive achievement for local government. The spirit of realism and co-operation now being shown by the local authorities will, I am sure, enable them to achieve their task—difficult task that it is—next year.
I recognise, however, that it is not always possible for individual authorities to relate their own actions to national targets, and for this reason I have given authorities a clear guideline on expenditure. They should aim to restrict their current expenditure in 1977–78 in cash
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terms to no more than 8½ per cent. over what they are spending in 1976–77. We believe that this figure should not be exceeded, save in exceptional circumstances.
I carefully consider also whether I should give an average figure of rate increases. There are dangers in giving such a figure, and one of these is that it may appear that the Secretary of State is trying to take a decision for individual local authorities which only they, in the light of their own knowledge of their own circumstances, can take. Nevertheless, I have decided to do so. I have said that the national average domestic rate increase should be about 15 per cent. It is an average, not a target, in this case. It is a calculation based on assumptions about expenditure, balances and inflation, and I shall explain it in a moment.
Some authorities will need to raise more than others in rates if local authority spending is to be kept in line with the limits set by the Government. The Government are concerned that local authorities should not overspend next year, but they are concerned also that spending on important community services should not be cut back too drastically. We need a period of careful national retrenchment, not a sharp and violent drop in the standards of our services. A wide variation between increases has to be accepted as the price of keeping rate increases at local level within proper bounds. Nevertheless, I believe that to give the average figure which underlies the settlement will help the public and authorities to understand our calculations.
The House may welcome some further explanation now of the assumptions which underlie the two figures—the 8½ per cent. and the 15 per cent. I refer, first, to the ceiling of 8½ per cent. on the growth in cash terms of each authority's expenditure. In 1977–78, as was the case this year, there will be a cash limit on the grant towards the estimated increase in costs affecting the accepted level of expenditure. This is based on the expected rise in local authorities' costs in 1977–78, which in total should not exceed 10 per cent. This is lower than the expected rate of general inflation for the same period because of the relative importance of employee costs in local authority expenditure. For example, pay

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costs up to July 1977 can be calculated by reference to the present pay policy and thereafter, up to 31st March 1978, it has been assumed that pay awards will be between 5 per cent. and 6 per cent.
On non-pay items, the assumption is that over the period covered by the cash limit costs will rise by no more than 15 per cent. between the average level during 1976–77 and the average level during 1977–78, which is the normal basis of comparison.
The net result of these different assumptions is a cash limit which assumes that total local authority costs will rise by just under 10 per cent. between 1976–77 and 1977–78. For current expenditure in 1977–78 the increase should be less, so that, allowing for the reduction in real terms of 1·6 per cent., local authorities' current expenditure should need to rise in cash terms by no more than 8½ per cent. The assumptions about inflation which underlie the 8½ per cent. have, I hope, been stated, and I am sure that by stating now what our assumptions are we can only help local authorities in their forward planning.
I turn now to the estimated average 15 per cent. increase in domestic rates. Rate increases in any individual authority are the product of its expenditure proposals, its assumptions about inflation, the amount it draws from balances and the amount of grant. The situation in every authority will be different, and I have to work in aggregate figures. Hence, any figure which I produce can be no more than a national average, but I have assumed, in giving the figure of 15 per cent., that authorities will stick to the Government's expenditure plans, will provide for the same degree of inflation for which we have provided in the cash limit and will draw about £175 million from balances.
I entirely accept, however, that there may be cases of individual authorities where, for example, there are no balances or where, as a result of the distribution proposals, the share of grant is reduced. In such cases increases in rates are likely to be higher. [Interruption.] I am not trying to disguise anything. I am being quite frank with the House. In other cases, authorities may have large balances or may be able to keep their expenditure significantly
746
within the 8½ per cent. maximum. In these cases rate rises will be lower.
Some hon. Members have made the point that the settlement involves a shift in the burden from taxpayer to ratepayer. This is marginally so compared with last year, but I want to make two points. First, there is no particular reason why the distribution of burden between ratepayer and taxpayer should remain the same from one year to the next. Secondly, the grant percentage that we now proposed is far from being, an historically low one. Indeed it is marginally higher than the grant percentage initially set in 1974–75. I am referring of course, to the figure of 60½ per cent.
The distribution of the grant has caused considerable interest. It has resulted in many letters to me and provoked comment from many hon. Members on both sides of the House. The general financial situation and the need to restrain public expenditure form the background to the proposals for the level of the rate support grant. With the level being reduced to 61 per cent. of relevant expenditure, the distribution of the total grant takes on a greater significance for individual authorities. It is only right, at a time when the grant is restricted, that it should be concentrated in those areas with the most acute social and economic need. Against this background, I have had to recognise that loss of grant could have a considerable effect on local authorities and their rate levels. My proposals seek to achieve a fair balance between conflicting pressures.
Distribution arrangements for the allocation of the needs grant have been discussed in great detail with local authorities and their associations. There has been pressure from the ACC and the ADC for the pattern of distribution of the 1977–78 grant to be kept as closely as possible to that of 1967. However, this easy solution would have been unfair, and would have left certain authorities without adequate support to meet the growing problems of the under-privileged and disadvantaged in their areas at a time when rate increases must be kept to reasonable limits. The regression analysis method for the assessment of needs, introduced for 1974 to 1975 by our Tory predecessors, has provided, until this year, the only generally

747
acceptable means of measuring the varying expenditure needs of authorities. We have been right to continue with it.
The major contribution that we have made to this system of assessment has been to extend the range of social and economic factors that are included in the needs formula. In 1977 to 1978, for the first time, a factor for unemployment has been included in the need distribution formula for authorities outside London. I shall come back to the internal London distribution later.
Having established a measure of the varying needs of authorities, I have had to consider how far we should protect authorities whose relative needs have been shown to be declining and who, therefore, will lose grant. Protection for losing authorities can be achieved by phasing—a process which, in this world of local authorities, is known as damping. It allows some recognition of the grant distribution of previous years to be carried forward into the distribution of the new grant. In 1977–78 this will be achieved by combining the needs grant formula for 1975–76 and 1976–77 with that developed for 1977–78. All the needs indicators in this combined formula are listed. It makes for a longer, but at least a more informative, order.
Compared with this year the non-metropolitan counties will get a smaller share of the needs grant. The most pressing social and economic problems are concentrated in urban areas and particularly in the inner cities.
Sir David Renton: Has the Minister borne in mind the fact that the problems of urban areas are being relieved by the building of new towns under the New Towns Act? People are moving out of urban areas and transferring their social and financial problems to the receiving areas which are in counties. Is it not most unfair to penalise those receiving areas and to benefit urban areas?
Mr. Shore: The fact that new towns and extended new town arrangements existed during most of the post-war period did not lead the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon), when he was Secretary of State for the Environment, to decide not to
748
propose that which he did propose. That was a new formula aimed precisely at giving extra resources to inner cities. This is not a Labour Government policy. It is now, and will continue to be, a bipartisan policy shared by all sides of the House.
Mr. Joseph Dean: When the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon) was the Minister involved, the formula that the Government now proposes was discussed and its introduction was considered. It was seen that it would have an adverse effect on Tory areas of the country and the whole scheme was scrapped.
Mr. Shore: The recollection of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Dean) is probably closer and more accurate than my own. I do not recall the matter in detail. What I do recall, and what I have with me, are the actual words of the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham that he spoke as recently as 12th November 1973, just a few months before the General Election. During the debate on local government he had this to say:
"I can tell the House that our proposals include a new needs element formula, based on an analysis of recent local government spending and a new level of resources element. The result will be to divert more of these two elements than before to the problem areas of cities."—[Official Report, 12th November 1973; Vol. 864, c. 41.]
Sir John Hall: Does the Secretary of State agree that the areas in which need arises change over the years? My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) has drawn attention to the fact that need is beginning to move from the inner city areas to outer areas. In my own county of Buckinghamshire, to which many families are coming from London to settle at Milton Keynes, many people are bringing all their social problems, adding a considerable strain to the social services of the county, and, therefore, adding to the costs of the individual ratepayer.
Mr. Shore: Surely, provided that the needs formula is reasonably sensitive—and I do not think any hon. Members seriously disagree with the formula—it will take up the needs as they emerge. I do not need to rely on what the hon.

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Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) said three years ago. On 26th November 1976, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, he said:
"No one questions the grave urban crisis … There is no question that resources will have to be found to cope with that crisis."—[Official Report, 26th November 1976; Vol. 921, c. 361.]
There is a general agreement that if we are going to be fair we must reflect the shift in the distribution of the needs element.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Does the Secretary of State accept that this year Cheshire has to find an additional 3,000 secondary school places? This is an area which is undertaking an increasing burden. Yet, for the second or third year running, the percentage of the rate support grant that Cheshire will receive, in relation to urban areas, is to be reduced. The shire counties have suffered under this Government.
Mr. Shore: The needs and resources of Cheshire—as is the case with the needs and resources of all other local authority areas—are taken account of in the formula which has been generally accepted. If hon. Members, apart from voicing feelings that their own areas have been adversely affected, can put forward a method by which we can operate the system more sensitively, I am always prepared to listen to them.
In addition to the economic and social problems, it is in these areas that in general one finds the heaviest rate burdens. I know that there are forecasts of the potential percentage increases in the rate poundages, particularly in the shire counties, which seem high. Of course I am concerned about the bills that face householders in the rural counties, but I must also consider those facing ratepayers in the inner urban areas. The differences in the amount of rates paid cannot be explained by the differences in incomes between the rural and inner city areas.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: What about Westminster?
Mr. Shore: I shall come to that in a moment. In the environment debate on 26th November the hon. Member for Henley implied that the changes in the needs grants distribution were in someway
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politically motivated. That is not so. As I have already pointed out, the present system of needs assessment was introduced by our predecessors. We have made no change in the basic principles of their methods of needs assessment, other than to increase the range of needs indicators used in the formula. I am sure that hon. Gentlemen would be anxious to make the system more sensitive than was the first model.
The machinery of regression analysis, which has been used ever since the passing of the Conservative Government's Act, has been used again for very good reasons. For all its faults, it produces a pattern of distribution linked to expenditure needs. To what extent authorities of a particular political persuasion benefit is irrelevant. [Interruption.] If Opposition Members were to talk to their colleagues who control local authorities in some of our major conurbations they would find that their colleagues would have difficulty in understanding their remarks.
There are two main points about London. London has a considerable advantage—although it is debated among London Members—in its high rateable resources. A downward adjustment has, therefore, been made—as it was for this year—to take account of that advantage. Nevertheless, London will get a greater share of the smaller grant cake in 1977–78. Its share of the England and Wales total of needs element will increase, thus consolidating the big improvement made in London's relative position last year.
Secondly, we have made a number of improvements to the arrangements for the distribution of the grant within London. Notably, the bulk of the arrangements for spreading across London the benefits of the high rateable values of certain authorities are now in the Rate Support Grant Order. This, I believe, will be welcomed by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) in particular. Also, the transfers have been made, I think, fairer and certainly more explicit. This year's scheme for making the transfers caused serious differences of opinion among the London authorities. I am glad to say that the arrangements for 1977–78 were strongly recommended to me by the London Boroughs Association. I have letters from hon.

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Members on both sides of the House urging me to proceed on the lines set out in the order.
This leaves us with a fiendishly complicated looking order; but I think that this is a price we should be ready to pay for the improvements being made. I should add that a small separate equalisation scheme will be necessary to transfer ratable resources from the City to other boroughs. This scheme will meet the requirements of existing legislation and complete the rate equalisation provisions proposed for London.
Hon. Members may have noticed in the order that it is proposed to give extra domestic relief to ratepayers in the City, Camden and Westminster. This extra help is being financed by inner London authorities only. It was asked for by the London Boroughs Association, which felt that domestic ratepayers in these three areas would otherwise be asked to bear an excessive burden. For the rest of England and Wales, the level of domestic relief will remain unchanged at 18½p in England and 36p in Wales.
Turning to the resources element, its relationship to the needs element will be unchanged in 1977–78 and remain at the 1976–77 ratio of 32½ per cent. to 67½ per cent.
Mr. Stephen Ross: The right hon. Gentleman referred to the domestic relief of 18p for England and 36p for Wales. There is a Bill coming before the House which is designed to help Wales by equalising water charges. Will there be any change as a result of that Bill?
Mr. Shore: There will be no change in terms of the order. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that in future we may want to take account of changes which have the effect of helping Wales in areas not covered by the rate support grant. I cannot say more than that. It is obviously something we should look at.
I have dealt with the levels of expenditure and grant in 1977–78 and the way we propose to distribute grant. There remain two interrelated questions—the effect of the Government's proposals on local authority services and the effect on employment.
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On services, a reduction in the total level of expenditure must mean that all standards will cease to rise unless authorities so re-order their priorities that some activities benefit at the expense of others. The Government believe it is right that local authorities should continue to exercise their considerable discretion, in the light of their own unique knowledge of local needs. We have however, in the report on the main order for 1977–78, set out the likely main consequences as the Government see them. I intend to include the same message in the circular I hope to send to local authorities shortly.
That circular will also set out the Government's view on the implications of the settlement for manpower. We have seen in the last two or three weeks a lot of comment about local authority employment; from calls for massive redundancies, without regard to the capacity of other sectors to absorb the manpower released, to gross overestimates of the job losses implied by the Government's proposals for 1977–78.
As some hon. Members will have seen in the Press, some of the local authority associations' own estimates have put the job loss at around 50,000. But in negotiations with the associations I, and officials on my behalf, have consistently told the associations that we regard their estimates as far too high, for the reasons which I have given, and we have explained to them in great detail the reasoning behind our forecast of 20,000–30,000 job losses in 1977–78.
The planned fall in current expenditure in 1977–78 is 1·6 per cent. If authorities follow past practice, they will make proportionately heavier cuts in their non-pay costs. In broad terms, the settlement may be expected to entail a reduction of about 1 per cent. of jobs in 1977–78. In practice such a reduction will not be achieved unless local authorities start straight away to review and adjust their manpower requirements, taking full advantage of the vacancies that occur from now on.
On this basis, I do not think that the reduction in 1977–78 need be greater than the 20,000 to 30,000 jobs I have mentioned. Local authorities plan ahead. They do not wait until each financial year arrives with its set of fresh problems. Authorities have known for some time

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the broad task they were likely to face in 1977–78. The settlement confirms that expected trend of expenditure and the need to continue with economies in staffing.
In national terms, I am confident that the job losses being sought can be achieved by natural wastage, which has been running at the rate of 5 per cent. a year.
Mr. Raison: The right hon. Gentleman persists in looking at this problem in terms of national averages. The trouble is that some counties will have to make very much bigger reductions than others. While the average picture may be as the Secretary of State describes it, it will be impossible for many counties to keep to the targets he mentions.
Mr. Shore: I admit that I have been speaking in averages. That is the problem when addressing oneself to the rate support grant. While it is true that some counties will be faced with greater expenditure problems than others, we must not hide the fact that they can meet those expenditures and maintain the level of services we wish them to maintain by raising their rates. If hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Benches are saying that they do not value sufficiently the services in their areas, and are prepared to see not a careful slimming down but a drastic cut, that is their local judgment. But hon. Gentlemen should not expect me to agree with it and should not expect me to support it.
Mr. Michael Heseltine: Will the Secretary of State explain whether he agrees with the Chancellor of the Exchequer that taxes are now too high? How does the right hon. Gentleman equate that conviction with the view now that local taxes should be increased as dramatically as he has suggested?
Mr. Shore: I do not think my right hon. Gentleman made such a sweeping statement as the hon. Member for Henley implies. My right hon. Friend has frequently said that in his view income tax is high, but my right hon. Friend has not made what I would consider to be an uncharacteristically rash statement about taxation in general. The Chancellor has specifically set the effects of income tax and their rates against a background of inflation. I think that we should leave it at that.
Sir John Hall: Does the Secretary of State not agree that one of the problems which faces the county authorities is that the statement about the average rise of 15 per cent. has been publicised fairly widely? Most ratepayers were expecting to pay no more than an additional 15 per cent. Those counties will now be in the position of having to raise far more if they are to maintain their services. They will meet considerable criticism from the ratepayers who will expect the county to remain within the average set by the Secretary of State himself.
Mr. Shore: That is one of the problems, and that was why I hesitated before producing any average figure at all. I do not wish to be misunderstood. The figure was meant as an average. Quoting 15 per cent. as an average means that some are bound to pay above the average and others below it. I willingly repeat that and make it plain to the House tonight.
We all know that rates of wastage will vary from area to area and from service to service. I am getting a little closer to a local and away from the national picture. I have always acknowledged that in a particular area today, as indeed in the past, there may have to be some redundancies, but they should be the exception rather than the rule, and should be minimised if employers take up the opportunities to reduce staffing levels by natural wastage as I have described.
When we last debated local government matters on 26th November the hon. Member for Henley indicated his opposition to the rate support grant settlement, claiming that the public would not be satisfied that the Government had acted with the firmness required. I am not clear what the hon. Member does want. He wants more resources to the inner cities, but will not say where these should come from. He objects to the relative reduction in grant to some of the shire areas because of the adverse effects this may have on ratepayers in these areas, but goes on to suggest that our overall settlement was not firm enough—by which I presume he means not harsh enough. Yet if we acted on the hon. Member's advice we should have a situation where the big cities were not helped through the needs element to keep down their rates, and where the rates in shire areas rose even more.

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If we reduced the rate support grant, what else could happen but that people in all areas would have to suffer wholly unjustified cuts in the basic reduction in services in order to satisfy what I increasingly suspect is the atavistic design of the Opposition.
I believe that the settlement that we have made is right. I do not wish to underestimate the task that we have set local authorities in 1977–78. In setting the task the Government are adhering to their published plans for local authority expenditure. I hope that the spirit of co-operation and support that has been evident from responsible local authorities this year will continue into 1977–78. I commend the orders to the House.

ROYAL ASSENT
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified Her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

1. Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Act 1976.

2. National Insurance Surcharge Act 1976.

3. Fishery Limits Act 1976.

4. Scottish Transport Corporation (Castle Bay Pier) Order Confirmation Act 1976.

RATE SUPPORT GRANT
Question again proposed.
7.6 p.m.
Mr. Michael Heseltine: Many hon. Gentlemen who listened to the Secretary of State's rather cosy description of the reaction of the local authority associations to his recent settlement will wonder whether something has not gone wrong with the communication channels between local and national government. Certainly the representations that have been made to me, and reports in the Press, paint a very different picture from the one that the Secretary of State painted this afternoon.
One overall generalisation that increasingly struck me as I listened to the Secretary of State explaining the growing complexities of finance in the rate
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support grant considerations, and the growing concern about the way in which the whole system operates, was that the commitment of my party to abolish the domestic rating system was one of the wisest political commitments that we have ever made.
The reality, which the Secretary of State and hon. Members opposite must understand, is that the rating system is now an arbitrary system. It is an arbitrary system of allocating resources, locally, and, as has been made perfectly clear today, it is made with the minimum of information about the impact on local communities and with the need to resort to broad brush approaches which must be unfair in their impact on local people depending on which community they live in. It is no longer a system that we as national politicians should tolerate.
Mr. George Cunningham: If rates were abolished, central Government would have to provide more to local authorities. Surely that would increase the arbitrariness of the distribution arrangements?
Mr. Heseltine: It would not increase the arbitrariness, but there would have to be some form of revenue-producing activities to replace the rates. That is the commitment that must follow. I see members of the Government Front Bench jumping all over the place with glee as though the thought had never occurred to them. I think they set up the Layfield Committee to look into these matters. They must be as aware as I am that other alternatives exist. It is certainly a commitment that my party has entered into and we will announce our proposals for alternative means of dealing with this local funding in the future.
Mr. Peter Hardy: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has had the chance to read the Layfield Report. I hope that he will, because he will find that the Conservative commitment may not be so easily achieved as he supposes. Would the hon. Gentleman reconsider the assumption in his remark about the growing share of personal budgets that the rates require? Is it not the case that the rates burden is the same today as it was 20, 30 or 40 years ago?
Mr. Heseltine: The amount that has to be found in terms of post-tax incomes is extremely serious for large numbers in the community.
To an extent the Government have done what I believe to be necessary in approaching the question of local government expenditure. They have moved in the direction of reducing the proportion of funding that comes from the central taxpayer. I believe that is a step in the right direction.
The Government have failed to grasp the overall need to reduce public expenditure on a more significant scale than they have achieved. They have ended up by reducing net expenditure by 1·6 per cent. and the proportion of support from the national exchequer by 4·5 per cent. The effect has been to leave the responsibility for carrying the consequences of the decisions that the Government should have taken in the hands of local authorities and the private sector. The dirty work that flows from this rate support grant will be done by people other than the Government. The Government should have done their own dirty work which inevitably they will be forced to do.
It was interesting to hear the Secretary of State again rehearse the argument that anything more severe would have caused a great deal of unpleasantness and harshness and that the consequences would have been hard to bear. We have heard that argument, not only by the Secretary of State, but by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the past two years. Every three to four months after that argument is put forward, one of them comes back to the Dispatch Box to explain that all the things which were impossible three to four months ago have now to be done because of the worsening financial crisis.
That is the dilemma. I believe that I put the position clearly and in much franker language than that used by the Secretary of State today in my speech on the Loyal Address to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. I then made it clear that there was a need for a harsher approach to local government expenditure. I understand clearly the consequences that I spelled out on that occasion, some of which the Secretary of State quoted, as flowing from such a decision. I believe that, faced with the choice between reducing staff levels and services in local authorities and increasing
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rates, the vast majority of people would prefer rates to be held at lower levels than the Secretary of State suggested. That is a harsh judgment, but, if I read the situation correctly, that is precisely the judgment that this country knows must be taken sooner or later.
As I see it, there are four reasons why the Secretary of State's proposals are wrong. First, I do not believe that the reductions in local authority expenditure are sufficiently large to meet the economic crisis facing this country.
Secondly, I believe that the responsibility for doing what has to be done is being transferred from central Government to the local authorities. The main cause of the agonising reappraisal in local government is inflation. The burst of inflationary pressures which gave rise to the crisis with which the Government are now grappling began some time in the early months of 1974 in consequence of policies pursued by the Government after they were first elected. That led to dramatic increases in the staffing costs of local authorities. That has been a major inflationary factor the consequences of which the Government are only now being forced to cope with.
Thirdly, the cuts have been engineered to cause the minimum impact upon people's daily lives. They have been designed to cut capital projects, as opposed to ongoing consumption, in the hope that the painful consequences that everyone knows follow from public expenditure reductions can somehow be delayed a little longer on the offchance that something will turn up—preferably North Sea oil. The fact is that, where it has been possible to abandon a road scheme, to cut house building and to reduce educational construction, that option has been chosen as opposed to reducing the numbers employed by local authorities. That is another misjudgment by the Government.
Fourthly, the changes are unfairly spread. They are unfairly spread for two reasons, both of which were inadequately dealt with by the Secretary of State. First, the right hon. Gentleman made no attempt to try to grapple with the difficult problem of those authorities which have tried to co-operate with the Government's economies and those authorities which have taken not a blind bit of notice.

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Secondly, within the unfairness of the spread, there is no justification for suggesting that the genuine problems within inner cities, which I recognise, should be financed to an increasing extent by ratepayers who do not live in those areas and whose problems they cannot conceivably be.
The Secretary of State was at pains to suggest that he was not doing anything that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon) or myself a few days ago had advocated. But that is to misrepresent the situation. I do not have the figures before me, but I believe that my right hon. and learned Friend certainly moved in the direction of increasing support for the inner city areas. But my right hon. and learned Friend was administering a rising budget and, within the context of a rising budget and a rising proportion of central Government support, he was moving in the direction of helping the inner city areas. The Secretary of State is dealing with a different situation. The right hon. Gentleman is dealing with a smaller proportion of central Government support and a reducing budget. In those circumstances, it is particularly harsh to try to continue to move in the direction in which my right hon. and learned Friend was able to move, because the action taken by my right hon. and learned Friend was in the context of an expanding situation.
When I spoke about much the same kind of problem, I made it clear that, to find the resources for the inner city crisis, the Secretary of State would do better to seek to enter into partnership with the private sector and to attract the savings of the institutions and pension funds into investment in land and other developments in those areas, if only the economic climate were conducive to profitable investment in those areas. I specifically precluded any suggestion that the Secretary of State should seek to inveigle ratepayers outside those areas to take on tasks which could not be considered to be their responsibility.
The Secretary of State made it clear that he had what I would describe as inadequate information to try to distinguish between those authorities which have conformed to the general pattern of economic behaviour that he wanted
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to see them adopt and those authorities which have not. In that event, his decisions must be arbitrary. On the basis of inadequate information, the Secretary of State must take decisions the implications of which he cannot fully understand in their local impact. It would have been better to face the real difficulties with which the right hon. Gentleman undoubtedly has to deal and to ensure that he had the information upon which better judgments were capable of being made.
Many authorities have had great pressures put upon them because they have tried to do what the Government asked them to do. They have cut their expenditure to the bone and run down their balances to help their ratepayers. They have done what the Secretary of State wanted them to do. However, those authorities have seen other authorities that not only have done none of those things, but have publicly flaunted their refusal to do so. Those authorities are now able to turn to the authorities which co-operated and say "What fools you were. We told you that under this Government there was nothing to gain from co-operating. All you had to do was to go on with your profligate expenditure and business would be precisely as before in terms of Government support"
What conceivable incentive is there this time round for those authorities which co-operated so well and to which the Secretary of State paid tribute to go on co-operating knowing that their only benefit will be more aggro in the local election results and the local Press?
Mr. William Wilson: Speaking as a member of the Warwickshire County Council, I should point out that its budget for a year is £69 million, that as a result of the present arrangements it will be short by £8 million, and that it has complied right up to the hilt with the Government's requirements.
Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Wilson) is quite right. His ratepayers are to be asked to pay not the additional 15 per cent. which is the convenient average which the Secretary of State produced, but 24 per cent. because they co-operated with the Labour Government who then

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stabbed them in the back because other Labour authorities had not co-operated in the same way.
It is encouraging to speak from the Opposition Dispatch Box nowadays. Yesterday, the right hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Prentice) explained the workings of the Cabinet. Today, the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East has explained the harshness which follows from the activities of the Secretary of State for the Environment. One begins to wonder about the survival capability of this Government as we listen to the stories that are beginning to flow from their supporters.
I believe that it would have been right for the Secretary of State to face the fact that there is a crisis of expenditure in local government and that it is his duty to find out the details of the figures. Only then could he have a dialogue with those authorities that are persistently flaunting their independence of him at the expense of those who have co-operated with him. It is not good enough for him to say that it is too difficult, that he does not know how to go about it, or that it will cause him great agony. He would have been more widely praised if he had got on with the job.
Mr. George Cunningham: Are we to take it that the sentence in the Conservative Party manifesto for one of the 1974 General Elections about "setting local government free" is null and void now?
Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman apparently assumes that if people use their freedom to overspend grossly and, therefore, prejudice the freedom of those who do not overspend, it is right to hitch one's wagon to those who abuse the freedom given to them. I do not see that argument. In order to protect the freedom of those who have helped the Government, the Secretary of State should at least have some conversation with those who have abused the Government.
I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) was right to increase the pressure that has come from the Opposition by asking the Secretary of State to find out and to publish a list of those authorities that indulged in the overspending. But I do not understand how the Secretary of State can produce a wealth of detail about
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individual local authorities and not know those which have overspent from one year to another.
Mr. Shore: That is the difficulty. There will not be any great problem in revealing what is the percentage expenditure of individual local authorities, taking the current year over last year. The Department will be producing those figures for all to study in the coming month. The difficulty is, having got the figures, how to interpret them. All that they show is how much, against the previous year, an authority has spent in aggregate. The hon. Gentleman must understand that that in itself will not show whether an individual authority has overspent. That in itself reflects all the changing circumstances of each individual authority.
Mr. Heseltine: I do not want to tell the Secretary of State how to control budgeting, but I should have thought that, if he started with that aggregate figure, it did not require great ingenuity on his part to say how he added up what figures to get that aggregate. The calculations have all to be done. Someone has produced a detailed budget to get to the total. Those figures should be available to the Secretary of State.
I believe that the mood of the nation is that people want to see an end to the inflationary spiral. That means that people at all levels, as we heard yesterday from the right hon. Member for Newham, North-East, have to adopt a different approach, and it should start with the Secretary of State for the Environment.
I want to draw attention to some of the representations which have been received from various authorities across the country. I have before me a Telex message from Stockport explaining how the authority had used up all its balances and therefore had none left to keep down rates but that it would now be penalised as if it had not done so. The London borough of Havering wrote saying that its calculations now showed that it would receive some £700,000 less than it had assumed that it would receive in earlier calculations. In all those circumstances, we must sympathise with authorities that tried to behave as the Government wished only to find at the last moment their assumptions changed dramatically.

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The second aspect of the unfair spread comes back to a point raised by the Secretary of State. It is that we now see a situation where, because of the crisis in our city centres, county ratepayers will have to pay over and above the average rate increases of 15 per cent. mentioned by the Secretary of State.
I have heard no argument from the Secretary of State explaining why the ratepayers of Avon face an 18 per cent. increase, those of Cambridgeshire a 23 per cent. increase, those of Cumbria a 25 per cent. increase, those of Northumberland a 25 per cent. increase, those of my own county of Oxfordshire a 25 per cent. increase, and those of Stafford-shire a 20 per cent. increase in order to cope with crises in some inner city areas whose ratepayers will not be asked to pay any addition at all.
I could understand the argument if it was that all ratepayers would have to pay more and that the Government intended to spend it on the inner city areas because of the dramatic crises there. But I cannot understand an argument which says "We have a crisis in many of our inner city areas, and we shall so arrange the rate support grant that the ratepayers in those areas in many cases will pay no addition, but the ratepayers in other areas will pay an additional 30 per cent." How can there be any justification for that?
The Secretary of State has made no attempt to justify his proposals. However, it is interesting to look to see which of the Parties controls many of these areas. It may be only coincidence that many are Labour-controlled and that the Labour Party will be on the defensive in the spring elections. Those are the areas where in the main a considerable degree of additional support appears to be going.
Mr. Shore: Not at all.
Mr. Heseltine: The Secretary of State says that that is not the case. But I notice that he did not produce any evidence. He did not quote any of the authorities. I have before me a list of all the authorities, all the increases in rates and all the controls politically. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion, although there are one or two exceptions—
Mr. George Cunningham: They voted Labour. That is the conclusion.
Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) says it for me. I was not expecting so helpful an intervention. The conclusion is "You have no problems if you vote Labour." But that is not strictly true, of course. There are problems, but they take longer to manifest themselves and they are always much more expensive to resolve in the end.
The Secretary of State made no attempt to explain the fundamental injustice of treating ratepayers in one part of the country differently from those in another part.
Mr. George Cunningham: I want to clear up any misunderstanding that there may be. I am saying that the inner city areas, with all their social problems, naturally look to the Labour Party to help to solve those problems. That is why they are, and should be, in receipt of the largest amount of assistance, according to the philosophy of the Labour Party and according to the philosophy which, at its best, the Conservative Party has also enunciated. Those areas happen to be represented by the Labour Party most of the time. There is nothing odd about that.
Mr. Heseltine: I understand the delusions under which members of the Labour Party operate. I am sure that the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury believes quite genuinely that, despite all the evidence, the growing poverty, the growing crime rate, the growing homelessness and all the other tensions of our cities which are worsening rapidly under a Labour Government somehow have nothing to do with this Government.
One of the most interesting features in the speech of the Secretary of State was that, for the first time, a new factor had been introduced into the needs element of the rate support grant—unemployment. For the first time, under a Labour Government, unemployment has become the factor to decide where to put the needs element in local government because, for the first time, under a Labour Government, unemployment is so serious in the

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city areas that it has to become a factor. The evidence is overwhelmingly against the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury when we look at what is happening in our inner cities. To believe that a Labour Government protect them is to spit in the face of reality.
Mrs. Millie Miller: The hon. Gentleman has drawn attention to a factor which belies his earlier statement that these arrangements were drawn with such a broad brush that they could not take account of individual changes in circumstances. But the fact that unemployment is a factor shows that needs are being recognised.
Mr. Heseltine: Unemployment is a factor, but it is not restricted to the big cities. There is no bonus in being unemployed in the shire counties as opposed to being unemployed in the cities. Under a Labour Government, unemployment has become a disaster. It is now so high that it has been introduced in a separate element in the rate support grant.
Sir David Renton: In any event, since 1929 unemployment has been a national responsibility, and not a responsibility of local authorities.
Mr. Heseltine: My right hon. and learned Friend is undoubtedly right. He chooses a particularly apposite year, because 1929 was the last time that unemployment began to soar under a Labour Government. It rose to 3 million by 1931. I know that Labour Members do not like being reminded of these facts. They have some way to go before they break their previous record. Unemployment records are always broken under Labour Governments, but these things never have anything to do with the Government so long as the Government are a Labour Government.
The Secretary of State said that he had done everything possible in the current economic situation to cut rigorously, and that anything more would have caused hardship. I understand from the Cabinet leaks and from the right hon. Member for Newham, North-East yesterday that the latest round of public expenditure constraints have had to be introduced without legislation. The last thing that the Government want is for their back benchers to get near these issues. The trade unions, it seems, must not be allowed to feel
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any hardship under these circumstances. The rate support grant is part of the overall package. That is the most that the Government can do.
The Secretary of State estimates that 25,000 people in local government will lose their jobs, but that this will cause the minimum of hardship. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman's fundamental assumption about the whole issue of job losses in local government. What has actually happened is a consequence of the rate support grant calculations. The effects of the changes introduced by the Government will be higher unemployment, lower levels of production, and a perpetuation of the malaise which afflicts our manufacturing industry. I am prepared to accept that the right hon. Gentleman may have saved some jobs in local government for a short time. But the price for doing that is to destroy more jobs outside local government.
To preserve the public expenditure levels associated with the rate support grant we have to tolerate crisis rates of interest. These rates of interest are adding to the burden of local authorities and are destroying jobs in the private sector. They are driving small companies and shop keepers out of the city centres. There are record levels of bankruptcy, and the link between public expenditure levels and the mounting destruction of the private sector is absolute. That is why the Secretary of State's analogy is wholly wrong.
We have to break out from the position that prevents the private sector from raising or investing money. As long as the right hon. Gentleman has his way, and as long as the arguments he put forward in Cabinet hold sway there will not be an alternative growth of employment in the private sector.
We have reached the situation where the private sector can no longer carry the burden which the Secretary of State believes it should. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Government's housing programme. When they came to power the Government wanted a surge forward in local authority housing. This was to be secured in partnership with the provisions of the Community Land Act and all the centralised power associated with it.
With the burden that was placed on the private sector in the form of rising rates of interest small property developers and

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builders were unable to maintain the momentum. The Government believed that the public sector would pick it up and carry it on, but the price for that has been even higher rates of interest and an economic squeeze that has strained the public sector's ability to maintain the momentum. The result is that next year will see the worst housing record for decades. The Government will go down in history for having destroyed the country's housing programme.
The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—I do not often quote him—said only a week ago that the housing crisis was the failure of the Government and of no one else. I believe that the Government have failed to secure a viable long-term economic policy because of the attitudes which underlie the concept of maintaining high levels of public expenditure associated with crisis rates of interest. It would have been better for the Secretary of State to make clear that he was intending to bite into the vicious cycle of inflation, but for him to accept an average increase in rates of 15 per cent. next year is to contribute to the vicious inflationary cycle which other Ministers are trying to halt.
To avoid that would mean telling local authority employees that they would not have a job, and they expected that. They must be told that; because, unless we condition people to that attitude, which is what I presume the Government mean when they say they want to switch resources from the public sector to the private sector, we will not succeed. How can the Secretary of State argue that these policies will have no real consequence when public sector employment is to be maintained at its present level? That is the last thing that the country expects to hear. The country expects to be told how much local government expenditure is to be reduced, and the Secretary of State has missed the opportunity of doing that.
The Government claim that they want to give a new sense of purpose to the private sector, and that is all right as long as their words are never translated into practice. But we know that they will be seeking powers to extend the scale of direct labour organisations. That is what we now come to expect. All of the Government's arguments are in favour of
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giving greater strength to the private sector, but when it comes to taking a decision they act in precisely the opposite direction. We shall resist the powers to be given to direct labour organisations with all our constitutional strength. That legislation will represent a further diversion of effort and the misuse of resources. It represents yet another appalling prospect for our economic revival.
We know the Government's attitude on public expenditure. We now face the prospect of inflation of 15 per cent. on a year-on-year basis starting next April. In spite of what we have been promised consistently by the Chancellor in his repeated Budget statements, we know that we face reductions in the levels of services, and the Secretary of State knows that that is the prospect.
It is no use saying that rates will not continue rising and that they will be reduced. In fact, we shall have rising unemployment in both the public sector and the private sector as a consequence of the policies that are being pursued. We shall have soaring rate increases. The increases will be up to 30 per cent. in many parts of the country. There is no prospect yet of any of these trends being reversed or of any change in direction.
The Secretary of State has missed an opportunity. He could have matched the mood of the country if he had put forward a very different approach—namely, the one that the country wants to adopt and the policy it wants to follow. However, he has missed the opportunity. That is his responsibility, and as things worsen next year—we all know on both sides of the House that they will—the responsibility will come home to roost.
7.41 p.m.
Mr. John Forrester: The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) made a typically vigorous speech, although he did not carry with him everyone on both sides of the House. I was surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman talk about the harshness of the Labour Government. In debate after debate we have been told how harsh the Government should be about public expenditure and how lax they have been. It seems that the words of Opposition Front Bench spokesmen do not always quite fit.

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This is a time of year when the Secretary of State for the Environment is urged to play Santa Claus. It seems that it does not matter whether he comes before us in a red cloak or a blue cloak, as he usually resists the invitations that are put to him. One of the many sins of local government reform has been to shift some of our loyalties into directions that we did not think possible before. I believe that there is a general acceptance in local government circles that there must be some curtailment of public expenditure in the present economic climate. There are those who still resist that idea, and they are entitled so to do provided that they accept the consequences of unacceptable rate increases.
We have reached the stage at which everyone accepts that we cannot make further cuts without hurting someone. There may be a little fat left in local government that could be trimmed but I do not think that there is sufficient to avoid taking unpleasant decisions. We must face the prospect that we shall have to learn to live with lower standards.
What usually happens in these debates is that each of us puts forward differing priorities. We cannot agree on what should be cut and by how much, and in the end it appears that the Government are the only party to come out on the side of the angels.
I cannot resist the temptation to say that local government reform has left us with a number of people surplus to requirements in some departments of local government. Perhaps it would be possible to include them among those who will lose their jobs. That is not to say that they are now under-worked, because I have always been taught that Satan finds work for idle hands. Certainly some of the work that has been found has led us into avenues of increasing expenditure. I rather suspect that that is something that happens in central Government as well. That can be the only explanation for some of the schemes and ideas that are put before the House.
I accept that the Government must reduce public expenditure, but surely it was not unreasonable for the shire counties to expect to receive the same amount of money for next year as they received this year. I understand that the
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shire counties will receive less cash next year than they received this year. They feel strongly that next year's total should at least have been the same as this year's. They feel that this year's total should have been the minimum thresh-hold for grant next year.
As a result of the changes in the formula and the percentage, Stafford-shire will receive £14 million less in 1977–78 than it would have received under the present rules. When we are refining the formula, especially in times of great difficulty, we should not do so in such a way as to add unfairly to the burdens of those who are the losers. That sort of refinement should be saved for better times. It is not possible to believe that in a time of high inflation we can contemplate paying less money than we paid out last year. I ask my right hon. Friend to give serious consideration to that point and the need for real transitional adjustments when a case may have been proved for alterations in the formula.
My right hon. Friend will know that many local authorities have to make plans years in advance for many of their services. It is unfair to inflict on them alterations in grants and formulae at the eleventh hour. If we are to expect good government from local authorities, we must avoid wild fluctuations in rate support grant from year to year. It would take a comparatively small sum to maintain last year's grant to the shire counties. If that sum were raised by taxation, it would cause hardly a ripple on the taxation scene, but if it is to be raised from taxpayers that could be the last straw for some. However, whether it is raised from taxation or from rates, it does not make any difference to the sum total of public expenditure, except that raising it by taxation may be less painful for some people.
Many local authorities have unavoidable commitments. Even if the average rate of inflation can be kept to 8½ per cent. over the year, it is a fact that many authorities, including Staffordshire, will face tremendous rate increases. Indeed, the figure of 30 per cent. has been mentioned to me.
Mr. Ivan Lawrence: The hon. Gentleman speaks for the same

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county as I represent. Will he confirm that the Labour leader of Stafford-shire County Council has indicated that the rates that the East Staffordshire District might have to face—it is a Conservative Council—might be as high as 35 per cent.?
Mr. Forrester: I cannot confirm that, but I shall take the hon. Gentleman's word for it. There has been talk in the county of rate increases well above 15 per cent. I wonder whether some authorities are crying "Wolf!" in anticipation of being able to say next May that they have kept the rates down. Certainly the increases will be quite substantial in many areas. I know that authorities with balances are being encouraged to spend them to keep the rates down, but we must look forward to what the situation will be in 1978–79 if all the money is spent in one year.
The alternative in many cases seems to be to attack the fabric of the social services, but I believe that in all spheres of our national life we need a period of stability. Violent fluctuations in rates will do nothing for the climate for the social contract.
I accept that London and the metropolitan districts have stress problems, but the same problems of social deprivation occur in many areas, including many of the old county boroughs that are now part of the shire counties. The theme now is that the problems are diluted when spread over their respective counties. However, it is just as traumatic to be homeless in Stoke, Nottingham or Derby as in London, Manchester or Merseyside. I hope that successive Ministers will not overlook that. I hope that they will in some way revise the formula, or give some special assistance which will take account of the dilemma.
We cannot but come to the conclusion that the Department, in refining the formula in favour of the large conurbation, has perhaps overlooked the effect on some of the other authorities.
I am not quite as happy as my right hon. Friend about the rebel councils. I know that there may be the practical problems that he mentioned. But if the effect of the changes in the formula is that some local authorities which publicly
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declared that they would not co-operate with the Government's economies can then levy a smaller rate increase than most others, or have a standstill rate, there could be a traumatic effect on the morale of the rest of the country. Nor do I think that the grant should be distributed in such a way that some authorities can maintain or perhaps substantially increase their services whilst others must drastically cut back.
The main popular victim of the cuts now seems to be the road programme. I suppose that that is an easy choice for a Government. It certainly has no impact on individuals. But we must remember that the roads are the main arteries of this country and must be maintained in a reasonable state, especially if we are to improve our productivity and the distribution of manufactured goods, which are supposed to be the basis of our economic recovery. We should not contemplate running down our roads to a dangerous extent or to the point at which they will eventually require more to put right than if they were under normal maintenance.
If we are to reduce capital expenditure on car parks, will my right hon. Friend call a moratorium on the painting of yellow lines? I have the impression that in many areas traffic management engineers are a bit brush-happy. I once wondered whether there was a national competition to see who could paint the most yellow lines.
Will my right hon. Friend also abandon any further consideration of the consultative document on the parking of non-residential vehicles in city centres? If the proposed policy were adopted it would not only be yet another reversal of past policies but an extremely expensive innovation.
I should like to repeat a plea I made last year. If there is to be no alteration in concessionary fares, can the opportunity be taken to consider introducing a national scheme to be brought into force when times are better? The matter is a source of great resentment throughout the country.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: The hon. Gentleman's knowledge of local government is well known and respected. Does he agree that if his Government introduced a scheme of concessionary fares

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it would be a great injustice to the many people in rural areas who do not live on a bus route or anywhere near a public service route? Would it not be sensible for authorities that run the existing concessionary fares schemes to enable the tokens to be used for taxi transport, which would at least enable people to take advantage of the system which exists for many others in urban areas?
Mr. Forrester: That is an interesting suggestion. Perhaps the Department will, in its full-scale review this year, consider whether that would be possible in the light of the public expenditure restrictions.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: It is a matter of social justice.
Mr. Forrester: Social justice is sometimes rough justice. I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern and why he makes that point, knowing the district from which he comes.
The document says that local authorities may want to have their own priorities on other environmental services. I wish to plead for the continuation of the grants for land reclamation, the only form of special assistance that Stoke has received. In some areas derelict land can quickly be converted to good ground for housing and industry, without special treatment, but in areas such as Stoke, with a long history of mining, in addition to the spoil heaps it is not unusual to come across half a dozen pit shafts that nobody knew anything about, and to have unstable ground which will take years of settlement before it can be used commercially. The only hope for places such as Stoke attracting new industry is to improve the environment. That is our insurance policy for the future. As with roads, it would be a tragedy if the design teams and skilled workers were dispersed so that we had to start again in a few years' time.
Many local authorities will co-operate with the Government to achieve acceptable levels of public expenditure that are within our means. If there is any spare cash, they have ample services on which they can spend it. The plea from the local authorities to the Government is "Please pass no more laws which will add to our expenditure burdens, but if you feel compelled so to do, provide 100
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per cent. of the cash to save us more expense."
7.56 p.m.
Sir Derek Walker-Smith: I am grateful for the opportunity to make a brief contribution to the debate and to follow the thoughtful and temperate speech by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mr. Forrester), to which we all listened with much interest.
As I propose to express some criticism of the orders and of the Government's policies in regard to the mechanism of the rate support grant, it is proper that I start by defining the limits of my criticism and identifying its substance. I do not join issue on the principle of economy on the public service or constraints on public expenditure. It is not a question of my admitting their relevance. Indeed, I assert it. I do not need to learn these economic lessons from the present Government. I certainly do not need to learn the basic truth that expenditure on social and local services is inherently, inescapably and ineluctably dependent on the economic strength of the nation. I promulgated this doctrine consistently for the three years in which I had the responsibility for one of the great social service Departments.
My criticism is that the Government's approach is ill-suited to serve the ends and promote the object of economy in public spending, that the methods selected and embodied in the orders are illogical and unfair, that they press too hardly on some, and that with others they even contain a positive inducement to further higher spending.
My criticism is that the Government have failed to distinguish between the sheep and the goats, the savers and the spenders, the prudent and the prodigal, the saints and the sinners. In so far as their policies do distinguish between those categories, they favour the spenders, not the savers, the prodigal, not the prudent.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: And the sinners.
Sir D. Walker-Smith: I was not going through the whole catalogue. I understand my hon. Friend's preoccupation with sin, but as we are approaching the season of good will to all men I thought that I need not repeat that.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Very unkind.
Sir D. Walker-Smith: I am always kind to my hon. Friend.
I propose to make good these general criticisms by reference to the particular case of the county of Hertfordshire, part of which I have the honour to represent. But it is a general criticism, with a firm foundation of general support. I shall cite two declarations in support of that statement. The first is by the Association of County Councils, which says that it considers that
"these proposals are grossly inequitable and therefore unacceptable."
The second is the opinion of the Association of District Councils, of which I am a Vice-President, though I hasten to say that I did not draft the declaration that I am about to quote. It says:
"the distribution of grant will, in our opinion, be counter-productive and will mean that large towns receiving higher amounts in grant aid will have less incentive to keep expenditure down, and those authorities receiving less will not only have to cut services but be forced to put up rates above the average".
These criticisms apply generally in the case of the shire counties and with very strong force in the case of Hertfordshire. That being so, I, supported by other of my hon. Friends representing the county, tabled Early-Day Motion No. 38, which criticises the inequity deriving from these proposals.
To assess the degree of inequity and hardship inflicted on the citizens and ratepayers of Hertfordshire, we have first to look at recent history. In the years 1973–74 to 1976–77, Hertfordshire has suffered a clear and sustained reduction of rate support grant in terms of the percentage of the national total, from 1·82 per cent. to 1·44 per cent. Looking ahead to the effect of this order, Hertfordshire's loss for 1977–78 will be £11·7 million, and of this £8 million is due to adverse changes in the formula proposed.
Of course, the problem of Hertford-shire is exacerbated by its high level of domestic rateable values. Because of the way the resources grant is calculated, Hertfordshire receives only a small proportion of grant as against areas with low domestic rateable values. It is, in my submission, wholly inequitable that highly-assessed areas should have to bear more of the strain while areas with low
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rateable values should get extra Government help.
Mr. Ronald Bell: That point is valid. Is there not contained in it the further point that in Hertfordshire, just as much as in any city centre, there are poor as well as rich people, and that the effect of this formula is that the poor people of Hertfordshire are subsidising the rich people in London?
Sir D. Walker-Smith: I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend who, with his customary perspicacity and prognosis, has identified the very point to which I was about to come. The result of the figures I have given is a massive disparity between the range of rates paid for similar properties in Hertfordshire and elsewhere. For 1975–76, the figures showed the range of domestic rates for the Hertfordshire ratepayer as £118 to £144. His counterpart in a similar property in Staffordshire paid, I understand, between £82 and £108, and in Leeds—I do not think that we have the benefit of the presence of a Leeds Members here—only between £59 and £83.
This was because the rateable value for the standard house in Hertfordshire is £277, in Staffordshire £216, and in Leeds only £96. That situation will worsen because, as the rate support grant is cut in 1977–78, the burden of the cuts will fall on those with high domestic rateable values. The principle is clear—there should be parity of treatment. Comparable hereditaments should be rated alike, which indeed, as I understand it, was the object of the switch from local to central valuation under the Local Government Act 1948. On the contrary, however, there is disparity and inequity from which my constituents and the ratepayers of Hertfordshire generally suffer. Obviously, I say, revaluation is essential in the interests of fairness and parity.
Mr. Ronald Bell: There is surely a point here. My right hon. and learned Friend said that, under the Inland Revenue assessments and the revaluation, similar hereditaments should be rated alike. We would need to change the law on net annual value. Does not my right hon. and learned Friend think that a house in a constituency represented by a Labour Member is bound to have a lower net annual value than one represented by a Tory?
Sir D. Walker-Smith: If that last proposition is true, it is something that should be corrected in a great many areas within the coming months. One would think and hope so. However, on the first point raised by my hon. and learned Friend, I think that the situation results from the method of valuation of the net annual value paid by the hypothetical tenant. But my hon. and learned Friend was perhaps less preoccupied with the 1948 Act than I was, owing to his enviable youthfulness.
Mr. Ronald Bell: Temporary absence.
Sir D. Walker- Smith: My hon. and learned Friend's temporary absence, then. Had he been here at the time, he would have heard that this was a central proclaimed objective for that legislation.
Although these disparities of valuation aggravate the effects of the Government's treatment of the rate support grant, there is, in addition, the central illogicality and inequity of the discrimination against those authorities which have managed their finances prudently and have hearkened to the exhortations of the Government. Hertfordshire has consistently kept within the Government's expenditure guidelines. During the past four years, and as projected for 1977–78, Hertfordshire's growth has been minimal even where Government policy permitted an increase. Hertfordshire has not contributed to the overspending. That is admitted by Ministers, who, however, unfortunately have not been able to reward such cooperation by an appropriate shaping of the formula of grant distribution.
The result is that adherence to Government policy has been penalised. The upright and the wayward have been punished alike. Hertfordshire has suffered because of the profligacy of other authorities, profligacy which has caused the Government to cut the grant by £50 million in the current year. If the profligates alone had their rate support grant cut, it might be considered fair, although perhaps still harsh; but a county like Hertfordshire, which has tailored its budget so rigorously, now has to pay for the massive overspending of other authorities.
What mitigation is proposed by the Government? The Secretary of State says that rate increases can be cushioned next year by dipping into balances. That is
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perhaps a natural reaction from a Government so dependent on the International Monetary Fund. The right hon. Gentleman quoted a figure of £175 million, but of course he admitted that it was an overall figure and with some authorities balances do not exist. That is cold comfort to Hertfordshire. Because of Government policy the cupboard is bare, and once again the long-suffering ratepayers of Hertfordshire will have to bear the burden.
For some of our ratepayers in Hertfordshire there will be added poignancy and irony in the situation. I refer to those who have recently moved into the county from London—and there are many of them. Had they stayed in London, they might have benefited both from the profligate spending of some London authorities and from the preferential treatment given by the Government to urban areas generally. As it is, they join the ranks of the hard-pressed ratepayers of Hertfordshire.
The impact of the rate support grant proposal on the Hertfordshire rates is calculated to bring about an increase of domestic rates 6 per cent. above the average national increase—6 per cent above in Hertfordshire and 10 per cent. below in Liverpool and South Tyneside. For what? Next year, the citizens of Hertfordshire will pay higher rates and enjoy reduced services, although perhaps the word "enjoy" is hardly the mot juste having regard to what they get. This is inequitable, unreasonable and undeservedly burdensome on deserving people.
Amongst the services which will or may well be prejudiced are nursery schools, old people's homes, and services for the mentally handicapped—the last a particularly deserving and demanding category for which much needs to be done and much should be done as a priority in Hertfordshire, as indeed in the county as a whole.
In conclusion, it is small wonder that these proposals and their impact find the citizens of Hertfordshire critical and resentful—not of the basic object that the Government seek to pursue, but of the clumsiness of their chosen methods and the unfairness and the illogicality that will result.
Clearly, the situation calls for two lines of action to promote fairness and

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efficiency in economy: first, the urgent revaluation of hereditaments throughout the country, of which I have spoken; secondly, a close and vigilant control of expenditure so that the proper stewardship of resources is rewarded and overspending discouraged.
Clearly, the Government have much to learn in this context, as appears all the more forcefully from yesterday's criticism by the right hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Prentice), who could not find it in conscience or reason to continue to share collective responsibility for the actions of Ministers.
Hopefully, by the time we consider these matters next autumn, other Ministers will occupy the Treasury Bench. But if, unfortunately, the present Government are still in office, I trust that it is not too much to hope that they will by then have learned from their mistakes and profited from the constructive criticisms that we seek to make.
8.12 p.m.
Mrs. Millie Miller: I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is not present at the moment, because I was hoping to start by dispelling one of his illusions. In his speech he paid tribute to the Opposition for having introduced in 1973 a scheme which was foreshadowing the kind of redistribution about which we are talking today. It is true that such a scheme was discussed. What my right hon. Friend might not have realised was that when Opposition Members, notably the right hon. and learned Member for Hex-ham (Mr. Rippon), realised that redistribution of the type about which we are talking today would have had the disadvantage, from the Tory point of view, of putting increased burdens on the largely residential suburbs, particularly in the Home Counties, they immediately dropped the formula and we were back to Square One again, except that those very areas received considerable benefit from the scheme which was eventually introduced to the detriment of the urban areas that are being helped today.
In spite of the criticisms that have been made about the way in which the Government are handling this matter, it is very interesting that although many local authorities are extremely distressed about the way that redistribution is affecting
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them and although many of their services will be affected, the discussions that have been taking place between the Government and local authorities have been on a basis that has produced a formula that has been acceptable, particularly to those with the greatest needs.
I have no doubt—I have said this previously—that the changed approach of the Government to their discussions with local government has been greatly to the benefit of all those people who use local government services.
I want to make another point before turning to my main theme. We have heard so much about cutting local government expenditure from the Opposition, as we hear almost every day of the week, but they completely neglect to mention the part that their Government played in the disastrous reorganisations. Those reorganisations meant that local ratepayers now bear heavy burdens. They also meant increases in staff in order to cope with the reorganisations. I should like to repeat a figure that I have quoted previously on this subject. Between 1972–73, when local government reorgantion took place, and the following year, in the whole country the cost of administration to local authorities rose from £835 million to £982 million. That is something that we cannot overlook.
Mr. Raison: I accept the point that there was a very big increase in the cost of administration and so on, but surely the point is that it is quite clear that the increase was just as great in London, which was not reorganised at that time, as it was in other parts of the country that were reorganised. That shows that, fundamentally it was not reorganisation that added this heavy cost.
Mrs. Miller: There are factors in London, however, which we are now trying to redress—factors which had been developing over the years as the imbalance in population became more marked. Let us remember that during the period of the previous Conservative Government, heavy pressure was put on the poorest people in the poorest London boroughs and in some of the richest London boroughs, by the depredations of the property speculators and their activities in housing. We should not forget that. It had a great effect on local government in the inner London boroughs. This

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is borne out by the fact that in the London Boroughs Association proposals, which have been mentioned by the Minister, all 32 boroughs have agreed that the three main central boroughs should have special treatment because of the special problems that they have over and above those of the rest of Greater London.
That is a very telling fact. After all, within the London area there are 32 boroughs. A number of them are Conservative-controlled, but this year, for the first time, there has been unanimity on the formula to redistribute rates within the London area, and that unanimity has included giving extra help to the very boroughs which Opposition Members talk of as being profligate but which have some of the most terrible burdens of, for instance, old age, immigration into the borough, the separation of families, and a hundred and one other social elements. That is something of which people ought to be reminded in the discussion of local government expenditure.
It is interesting that in spite of the constant campaign being waged in the House and the media about the overspending in local government, the Minister said tonight that for the current year overspending will be less than 2 per cent. Moreover, I understand from the London Boroughs Association that if the offset in savings in capital expenditure of £90 million is taken into account, it will bring the overspending to about 1 per cent.
Perhaps there are those of us who wish that some of the Government's estimates could get as near as that to fact when we hear some of the massive figures that are put before the House.
I am very relieved at the way that the rate support grant is working out, although a number of problems still remain. Thank goodness that, in line with the policies announced by the Prime Minister, resources will be concentrated on the depressed inner city areas and that the rate support grant will be distributed in their favour. However, this may well not be sufficient in the London area. It is my duty as a London Member to point out that factor.
I think that the Department has established an Inner City Directorate, which is to bring together information on which
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strategic discussions can be held so that all agencies operating public services will be able to consider the needs of the inner London area. I hope that the day will come when this will work down to local levels so that all those operators of public services, whether they be local government, the nationalised industries, the National Health Service, or the fire service, will link together in considering the problems of their local districts.
There is a great deal that can be achieved in economy and satisfaction with services by that kind of movement. Structure plans could be developed, and possibly by the very fact that such organisations worked together we would see a great improvement.
Within the last few days I have been shown a cutting from the local government journal of Majorca. There a law has been passed which says that when roads are to be dug consultations have to take place with all the services, such as gas, water and electricity, and that roads may not be opened unless they have co-ordinated the plans to do all the necessary work while there is still a hole in the ground, after which it can be filled up and there will be no further trouble to the surface of the road. What a saving it would be if we could achieve that small amount of co-ordination on the number of roads with which we are concerned compared with the number in Majorca.
Mr. Ronald Brown: It happened in a borough in inner London with which I was associated. A road was like a battlefield for nearly 14 months, at the end of which time it was beautifully resurfaced, but the Post Office decided that it wanted to lay some transformers under the road, so the process started all over again.
Mrs. Miller: My hon. Friend makes a valid point. If we had a regular, ongoing relationship between the services, we might be able to achieve our aim in 14 days, four months—who knows?
The Government have promised that cuts in housing and capital expenditure will not affect stress areas, but there is an urgent need to deal with many of the housing problems which concern not simply people in the queue for housing accommodation from the local authority but the poorest people, many of them in

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privately rented properties, who are suffering severely.
So much has been said about equity in this debate that I should draw the attention of hon. Members opposite to the fact that the London Boroughs Association informs me that the average amount paid in rates by householders in the London area is about 70 per cent. above the amount paid elsewhere in the country and that, although Londoners were assisted this year, it is probable that the amount will be between 72 per cent. and 73 per cent. in the coming financial year.
Mr. George Cunningham: Say it again.
Mrs. Miller: I will say it again: the average amount paid in rates by householders in London is 70 per cent. more than the average paid elsewhere in the country, and in the coming year it will probably be between 72 per cent. and 73 per cent. more.
However much redistribution takes place, it is noticeable that the Minister has said that it must be done gradually, and so it has been acknowledged this year in the rate support grant settlement by giving an extra ½ per cent. to London. I am not very good at mathematics, but on my calculations, taking the figure at between 72 per cent. and 73 per cent. next year, at the rate of ½ per cent. it will be about 150 years before London gets its fair share of the needs element, and the gradual change will have taken place.
Great efforts have been made by the London Boroughs Association, and it is to be congratulated on having achieved a formula which satisfies inner and outer London boroughs alike. If this kind of co-operation continues, as the needs element is recognised more effectively there may be a general improvement in relationships between local authorities. The trouble is that the people of London are hard pressed. Cost limits have been imposed on the National Health Service, with the consequent closure of an unknown number of hospitals. No consideration has been given to the serious health problems and the problems of morbidity in the London area. A new word has been coined in our language in the last few months—RAWP—the
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allocation of resources in the health service. This has not even been reflected in the cuts in services to Londoners, who face the prospect of even more serious cuts in their health services. This is serious in an area with such severe social problems.
Another threat is in wait for Londoners of which I hope the Minister will take particular notice. There is a seemingly innocuous Bill entitled the Water Charges Equalisation Bill. The Government should be warned that the careful work done by the local authority-controlled Metropolitan Water Board to provide good and adequate services for London could well be undermined. Londoners could be severely disadvantaged by the Bill's proposals. It would be most unfair if they had to carry the burden for authorities which have been so concerned with saving rates that they have overlooked the provision of proper services to their residents.
Mr. Ronald Brown: Will my hon. Friend underline the fact that only a small proportion of Londoners in the inner city areas will have to pay the extra 7 per cent?
Mrs. Miller: I agree. The root of the problem is that in all the inner urban areas it is the poor people who carry the lion's share of the burdens. For this to be even contemplated when there is a consultative document before the House on the future of the water industry seems to be beyond the imagination.
I refer briefly to the general problems of local authorities. I realise that throughout the country they have severe problems to tackle. The cuts in social services amounting to £26 million will bear very heavily and tragically on the elderly and the disabled. For example, the Government have given guidance to protect field and domiciliary social services at the expense of residential care. That is terrible. It is incredible that any Government claiming to have a conscience, particularly a social conscience, should say, when local government cannot take on more social workers because it has not the means, that residential care should be cut in favour of domiciliary care and not provide the funds for domiciliary care to be made available.

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However sympathetic the Government may have been in the rate support grant discussions, there are still many faults, and unfortunately it is too late for us to rectify them this year. I hope that thought will be given to this matter in the coming year. As one who has served in local government and is proud of the local government system, I hope that the Government will not go too far in undermining the right of local government to make its own decisions, to choose how to spend the money it raises and how to use its balances.
As the Secretary of State said, local government is, in the main, responsible and responsive and has shown itself to be so—far more, perhaps, than some of the people who produce to the House non-estimates of public expenditure, and it is difficult to get to the root of the reasons for them. I hope that this debate, which, in the main, has not been party political, will be of help to the Government in their future discussions with local authorities.
8.28 p.m.
Mr. Timothy Raison: The hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) has spoken up for London, and I do not blame her. She spoke as much for her old local authority as for her present constituency, and again I do not blame her for that. The only point I would query was when she spoke about health provision in London. London seems to be suffering from the problem of over-provision in that respect. In Buckinghamshire we suffer from a sheer lack of provision due to our expanding needs and because of the fact that resources are not keeping up with those requirements.
I speak primarily in this debate as a Buckinghamshire Member of Parliament, but I shall seek to make a number of general points about the order. I regard the Rate Support Grant Order as a shabby set of provisions. I do not grumble at the reduction, because I believe that the Government are right to reduce the percentage from 65½ per cent. to 61 per cent., and I make no complaint about that. I grumble at the method of distribution used in the order. I also grumble at the fact that the Government's policy will damage thrifty local authorities.
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The Government are not looking seriously enough at the possibility that something can be done about this problem. The Secretary of State for the Environment said blandly that we cannot do anything about the situation without interfering in great detail in the local authorities. But Schedule 1 of the order sets out in enormous detail the "additional factors" so-called. It lists all the things such as number of acres, number of children and other elements. I cannot understand, and I hope that the Minister will explain, why it is possible to set out these factors in the schedule and yet not to move to a genuine assessment of needs.
I believe the right way to approach the matter is not as is done at present. I believe that the base rate of support grant should not be related to what local authorities spent in the previous year, with something added on top. The right way to go about the matter is to have a genuine needs element and a genuine assessment of local needs, and to concentrate on that and forget what local authorities spent in the previous year. I hope that the Government will explain why it is not possible to do this. This does not seem to be interfering in any sense with local democracy.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mr. Forrester) and others have made it clear that the main objection to the order is in its excessive unfairness to the shire counties. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) also set out this matter eloquently. This policy has been presented by the Government in a way that conceals the toughness of the decisions that will have to be taken by some local authorities. The Government in the last few months have tried to shift the blame for the inevitable repercussions from their own shoulders to the shoulders of local authorities. I have principally in mind Conservative local authorities.
Let us examine the impact of the order on Buckinghamshire. Buckinghamshire ratepayers have had a tough time in the last few years. The prospects for next year are grim. I have already said that I do not grumble at the reduction in the overall total of rate support grant. If the Government had not changed the formula from last year, the effect of the

787
reduction would have been to leave the county £5·4 million worse off. Because they have changed the formula, we shall lose much more than that amount compared with the previous year. As a result of the new bias in the formula, no less than £9·7 million is the figure by which the county will be worse off as compared with last year's formula. We are talking about a total expenditure of nearly £100 million and that is a heavy burden.
What rankles in my county, and indeed in others, is that we have toed the line. We have already economised sharply, yet we have obtained no reward whatever. The situation now is that if the Government's advice is followed and we run down the balances to 5 per cent. of gross spending, and reduce earlier expenditure forecasts by £5 million and at the same time take up all the options for reductions, it might be found possible to hold the general rate rise to 20 per cent. and the domestic rate to 30 per cent. These are steep figures of rate increases and they are accompanied by the inevitably severe reductions in services.
The most appalling moment in the Secretary's speech today was when he said, "If you do not like it, all you have to do is to put up the rates". It seemed a particularly cynical remark coming from a Government who are allegedly anxious about the social contract. We have a grim picture before us.
The rate of inflation is soaring while the incomes policy has the effect of holding down the pay of a vast number of my constituents. There will inevitably be a big and damaging effect on services.
What makes us bitter—as I said in an earlier intervention—is the bland way in which the Government keep talking about averages and then slide over the fact that there are bound to be big variations in those averages. For example, in the Secretary of State's rate support grant speech to the Consultative Council, he said:
"We have also taken the view that the average domestic ratepayer should not have to face rate increases greater than the expected increase of cuts through general inflation."
Later in that speech he said:
"The national average increase in domestic rates should not be greater than 15 per cent."
But in Buckinghamshire the figures will be way above that. I believe that other
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hon. Members from other counties will say that in their counties there are still greater increases.
We are faced with cuts, and the question is: what do we cut? We can fairly say that we get precious little help from the Government on this, but the cuts we have to contemplate are grave. I am as deeply concerned as the hon. Member for Ilford, North about the impact on the social services. One cannot help but be concerned. In the neighbouring constituency to mine—Buckingham—the local authority is apparently unable to provide the fire engines necessary for the new town of Milton Keynes.
Above all there is bound to be a heavy cut in education. It may be that one can save a bit by cutting down on administrative expenses, and I welcome that. It may be that one can save a bit on school meals and so on. That is a perfectly sensible thing to do. But the fact remains that the size of the cuts—about £5 million—likely to be borne by education can be achieved only by shifting teachers around and by making them redundant. It worries me that the Government will not accept responsibility for the fact that redundancies will be caused. It is the failure of the Government's economic policy which is bringing about those redundancies.
It is disgraceful that the Secretary of State should be trying to shift all the blame for this on to the local authorities. It is regrettable that the Chancellor of the Exchequer tried to give the same impression in the debate yesterday. The House may recall that on 22nd July the Prime Minister, at Question Time, acknowledged that there would have to be redundancies. Indeed, he made it clear that he believed that there should be redundancies. Ever since then the Secretary of State has been trying to duck the issue. In correspondence with me he refused to say that he endorses what the Prime Minister said. I believe that he has behaved very badly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) said in his spirited speech, the upshot of all this is quite simply that the already discredited rating system is becoming more and more discredited.
We all know that one of the great difficulties here is the incredible complexity of

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the rate support grant system. I do not know why the Buckinghamshire rate support grant has dropped by quite as much as it has. I doubt if anyone can explain in detail—perhaps one or two boffins in the Department of the Environment could—what is the impact of the rate support grant. I doubt whether they can explain the equally great disparities in other parts of the country. But I am sure that too little allowance is made for a growing population.
So there is a formula which nobody understands, and its very incomprehensibility makes it easier for the Government to manipulate the rate support grant system. This constant manipulation is undermining confidence in the rating system as a whole.
We have from the Government a policy which sounds constructive and sensible, that is, a policy of trying to help inner city areas. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and other hon. Members on both sides that inner city areas have very grave problems, but I seriously question whether the rate support grant, used in the present fashion, is the right means of redistributing income to help the inner city areas. In some respects the inner city areas are already much better off in the provision of services. They are not having to skimp on services in the same way as areas such as my own county are having to skimp.
When I recently went to a conference attended by local government representatives, I could not help being struck by the fact that north-eastern authorities sent large delegations. It was the sort of conference at which representatives could get their local authorities to pay for the cost of their travel, their hotel bills and so on. The north-eastern local authorities were able to send large delegations, but the rural counties were conspicuously absent because they are having to scrutinise every penny in a way that does not apply to some urban areas.
Even if the Secretary of State is trying to push more money into urban areas because they need more services, it seems rather paradoxical that the money is then used to keep rates down rather than to provide those services. Perhaps it is sensible and helps people more if they have money in their pockets and less in the way of services—one could argue that—but,
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although the object is to try to produce additional services in these areas, that is not what happens. The money goes towards keeping down the rates.
Of course, rates overall are bound to be part of the system of redistribution, but I believe that the rate support grant is a peculiarly arbitrary way of doing this. For example, if one is a rich person living in, shall we say, Sutton Coldfield or some other salubrious city suburb one will do well out of the Government's system, but if one is a poor person living in Buckinghamshire or some other county one does badly. This seems grossly inequitable. It shows that the rate support grant is not a good method of redistributing income in that sort of way.
Councils cannot redistribute income and wealth in their own areas. If a council had the money it could effect a major transfer of income from the rich people in its area to the poorer, and, although one could argue about that, it would at least be some kind of justification for this particular mechanism for redistribution, but because of the nature of the rating system the money goes to everyone in, say, the city of Birmingham, whether rich or poor, and does not go in the same way to everyone in rural areas.
The Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Alec Jones): I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will realise that, if one is trying to compare the position of a rich person in one area and a poor person in another, no one suggests that the rate support grant is the right method. But, surely, that is why successive Governments have supported the idea of rate rebate schemes.
Mr. Raison: I agree that rate rebate schemes come into it, but they affect only a limited number of people. What the hon. Gentleman said does not meet my point that the rich residents of authorities that contain inner city areas do well out of the system but poorer people elsewhere do badly. That seems quite incontrovertible and is a serious criticism of the present system.
What is the relevance of the unemployment factor? My hon. Friend the Member for Henley made some pertinent points about what has been happening to unemployment in the past year or two. It is questionable whether the unemployment factor is a valid element, because

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unemployment produces few extra burdens on local authorities. It produces huge burdens in other ways—I do not seek to decry that—but the actual amount of extra spending entailed for local authorities as a result of unemployment is minimal. There may be a little in the careers advisory services and so on, but it is not a genuine factor in local authority spending, and the elements in the rate support grant should all be directly related to local authority spending.
The truth about this Rate Support Grant Order is that it is a highly political order, with next year's elections very much in mind. The Secretary of State was thoroughly disingenuous about this. The political facts of the matter are that the Government are desperate to hold on to some of the metropolitan counties where there will be elections next year, but they will fail. We shall win at least a majority of them. It is quite evident that in constructing this year's rate support grant the Government have decided to pour money into those areas in order to try to hang on to seats. At the same time they are reducing the money to be sent to the counties that are largely Tory-controlled and that they know they cannot win anyway. They hope that the Tory authorities will carry the blame for the big rate increases.
There is no doubt that the Government are manipulating the Rate Support Grant Order for directly political ends. If the Secretary of State had been honest, he would have included in the rate support grant formula the needs element, the resources element, the domestic element and the new electoral element.
8.46 p.m.
Mr. George Cunningham: I have enough respect for the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) to know that he does not really believe the last part of his speech.
I am at least the third hon. Member from an English constituency who has so far spoken in this debate while there has been no Minister from the Department of the Environment present on the Treasury Bench. I know that a Minister from the Welsh Office will wind up tonight,
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but looking round the Chamber now, among those wishing to speak, I can see no Welsh hon. Member apart from the Minister. The other hon. Members who will speak will, presumably, be those who represent English constituencies. It is therefore necessary that there should be a Minister from the Department of the Environment on the Treasury Bench.
Mr. Raison: Another odd thing about this is that, although the order covers the transport supplementary grant as well as the rate support grant, no Minister responsible for transport has appeared in the Chamber today.
Mr. Cunningham: I will not comment on that. One has to draw the line somewhere, and I am not sure whether I agree on that point. I hope that my message will get through. When there is a debate in the House that largely concerns the Department of the Environment—no matter what reasons there may be for Ministers being elsewhere—at least one Environmental Minister must appear on the Treasury Bench, even if he has to starve for seven hours to do it.
I do not believe in asking Ministers for favours. They have committed a grievous affront to me and to other hon. Members. My practice is to wreak my own vengeance in my own way, and I will do that. I hope that the message will be received by Ministers that this behaviour must not be repeated. I hope that you, Mr. Speaker, will use your influence to ensure that when the House is debating a matter of this sort a Minister from the relevant Department appears on the Treasury Bench to listen to it.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine): Perhaps I can help the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) in this matter. The question of which Ministers should be present, if any, has nothing to do with the Chair.
Mr. Cunningham: I know that that is technically correct, but I can recall occasions when the Chair has intervened on such matters in order to ensure that debates take place with the relevant Ministers present. I do not accept that debates in this Chamber are not a dialogue between hon. Members and the

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Government and that in many cases the Government are irrelevant because we should be talking to each other and trying to win each other's votes.
I am glad to say that my highly respected colleague, the Minister who is responsible for housing, has now appeared on the Treasury Bench, but I still wonder why his Department was not represented there for between 20 minutes and half an hour. It had better not happen again.
The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) made a great deal of the point that authorities that have exceeded the base line for expenditure in the previous year are not in this rate support grant being specially penalised. I know the resentment that that causes to some people, but I wish that he and others who make this point would recognise the practical difficulties that any Minister from any party would face in attempting to impose such a penalty. [Interruption.] I am embarrassed by the number of Department of the Environment Ministers now present, but it is no more than right.
It should be recognised that if it is possible to have a base line for the crude control of expenditure that takes account only of past expenditure it is not possible to have a system that imposes a penalty on authorities that overstep that line. It would be like saying that the relative expenditure of various authorities must be frozen for all time at what it stood at a year or two back. If the Government are trying to help, for example, inner city areas there will be higher expenditure by those authorities than there was in the past. If the Government try to hold down that expenditure to a base level related to past expenditure, no flow of expenditure between one kind of authority and another will ever be possible.
Overspending above the base line of the past is not by definition wrong, and, if my right hon. Friend did what he was urged to do, there would be no substitute for his having to say, for example, that Birmingham could spend so much and Islington could spend so much, and having a figure settled for every authority in the country.
Mr. Ronald Bell: I understand what the hon. Gentleman means, but what my
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hon. Friends have been saying is that no regard is had in the formula to the spending of the authority in the past year as an indication of its needs and resources. The counties were asked to run down their balances to approximately 5 per cent. of their gross spending. Those that have done that in response to the Government's request are now in a very thin position. Authorities that have not done that—mainly the inner city authorities—are sitting in a nice position. No account is taken of that in the present formula.
Mr. Cunningham: I understand that. It is sometimes extremely hard for an authority that has laid itself out to pare away to see another authority that has been irresponsible going ahead. But the fact that an authority has increased its expenditure is not in itself a sign of irresponsibility. One authority that has increased its expenditure might be irresponsible, and another might be behaving responsibly in having done so. Therefore, it is necessary to have a tremendously sophisticated base line—as sophisticated perhaps as the needs element, which is complicated enough—or something close to it. It is not as easy as the hon. Member for Henley suggested.
We should recognise that central Government now bear two-thirds of the cost of the most massive element in local authority expenditure—staff salaries. The time is coming, if it has not already come, when central Government cannot remain as detached as they have been in the past from the settlement of the levels of local government staff salaries and numbers. God knows, if central Government get into that business it will be extremely difficult and embarrassing, and the question of local government independence will certainly arise.
I cannot see how it is possible for us at national level to continue to be responsible for bearing 60 per cent. of the cost of salaries—and bearing the costs of the increase in numbers of local authority personnel—when we say that we shall not directly influence the levels at which those salaries are set.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford. North (Mrs. Miller) drew attention to the relationship between the amount spent in rates outside London and in London. Having listened to the debate, apart from my hon. Friend's remarks, one would have

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thought that London ratepayers were spending much less on rates than those outside London. The figures bear repetition. Those that I have taken are probably drawn from a different year than the one to which my hon. Friend's figures relate, but my figures are bad enough.
Outside London the average domestic ratepayer pays £94 a year actual cash. Inside London the average domestic ratepayer pays £148 in cash. That is 57 per cent. more than outside London. The expectation is that, if all the authorities in the country were to have an average 15 per cent. rise, the London rise—because of the arrangement in this rate support grant—might be about 11 per cent. in this coming year.
If we applied that sort of increase in London, there would be a very slight coming together of the figures. But on this year's showing the London cash figure would still be 54 per cent. higher than expenditure outside London. No one can argue that London has in the past been, or will be next year, massively sub-sidised by areas outside London.
In the past London has had far less than its proper share of the needs element. I know that it has its so-called excess resources some large part of which we are permitted to keep by this order, but our problems are excessive compared with those of most other areas and the needs element distribution in the past has not reflected that.
I want to mention the proposed water charge equalisation scheme. There will be great resentment about that in the areas that have to pay for it. The only good thing about it is that it attempts to equalise the cash incidence—not rates in the pound, but cash incidence—of the charge. That is a concept that some of us in London have been trying to get accepted as a legitimate one for a considerable period. It is one that the Secretary of State has gone some way towards recognising and accepting in this order. Here is another little precedent that we shall use in future.
Mr. D. E. Thomas: With regard to the water charges equalisation scheme, the hon. Gentleman should be aware that he has got away lightly because many of us would have liked to
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have seen a realistic economic charge made for water taken out of the areas of the Welsh Water Authority and used in other water authorities. The equalisation scheme will ensure that a far lower rate of return is made for water impounded in Wales than there would have been if some of us had been making the charge.
Mr. Cunningham: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand when I say that he knows better than most that Wales is not a natural water area. Some parts have a water surplus and some have not. The hon. Gentleman should remember that the whole of Wales receives a domestic rate subsidy virtually twice as great as the domestic rate subsidy that England receives and that England receives only two-thirds as much as Scotland. If we were not to go ahead with that scheme, there would be a slight offset with the advantage which Wales possesses.
The needs element coming to London next year is extremely modest—a rise from 19 per cent. to 19½ per cent. It is so modest that the Secretary of State preferred not to mention the figure in his speech. As he said, it confirms the shift of last year. It does not increase it, except to an insignificant degree. It will be necessary in future years to proceed with the rectification of past errors which have denied to London the amounts which it ought to receive in the needs element.
The Secretary of State is entitled to my congratulations and thanks because in this rate support grant he has abolished the old London rate equalisation scheme. There will still be one, but nothing like the old one. I am glad to throw some dust on the coffin of the old scheme. I thought that it might take another year to get rid of it. I am as pleased as I am surprised that those who were so bitterly opposed to the change 12 months ago now seem to find themselves strongly in support of it and will no doubt be supporting it tonight. That goes for some of the people in the London Boroughs Association and in the Department of the Environment.
One of the features of the new arrangements which is particularly welcome is that the London boroughs will be treated

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on a more individual basis. I have always taken the line that in local government financial matters London does not exist. The boroughs exist. The amount of local authority expenditure which is managed on an all-London basis is about 25 per cent. to 30 per cent. The rest is controlled by individual boroughs. The arrangements in this rate support grant base themselves more on the separate needs of the boroughs and the separate excess resources, if that is the word, of the individual boroughs. That is to be welcomed.
However, in this new order there are elements from the old régime. I understand that it will take time to get rid of them. But I make the plea that work should start now to ensure that the removal of the illogically based equalisation arrangements continues in next year's rate support grant. The indications are that what we are doing tonight will benefit outer London more than inner London. No one knows the exact figures, because they will depend on the rates levied and how much additional expenditure particular authorities care to indulge in. But, making the same assumptions about each authority, outer London seems likely to be better than the national average by about 4 per cent., whereas inner London will be better than the national average by about 2 per cent.
Regarding the intra-London situation, we have not done anything of enormous advantage to inner London compared with outer London. That is the argument for proceeding with the eradication of the intra-London equalisation arrangements which remain in the present rate support grant.
However, this is a good basis for the future. I think that there has been a great breakthrough in recognising that London is a collection of boroughs rather than one local authority. I see in the rate support grant this year a perfectly good basis for proceeding with even better arrangements next year.
9.5 p.m.
Sir David Renton: The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) gave the House a vivid view of the needs of his own constituency. But I ask him to bear in mind that the problems of his
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borough would be even greater but for the fact that many people who formerly resided in it have over the last 15 years or so come to my constituency—and very welcome they are. But their coming has added to the financial problem of the local authorities of my constituency, and I ask the hon. Member to bear with me while, by way of contrast with what he said, I describe some of the difficulties that we are experiencing so that he and other hon. Members may judge whether the Government's attitude in this matter is equitable.
My main complaint is about the preference given to urban authorities at the expense of the non-metropolitan counties. When this rate support grant comes into operation next year, the result will be that Cambridgeshire will find itself deprived of £10 million which it might otherwise have had and that the Government's proposals could involve an increase in rates of up to 23 per cent.
It so happens that the county of Cambridgeshire is the fastest growing in the United Kingdom. In that county, I represent Huntingdonshire—still called that as a parliamentary constituency although no longer an administrative county—which contains the whole of Huntingdon District plus part of Peterborough. Those two parts of Cambridgeshire are the fastest-growing parts of Cambridgeshire and of the whole country.
The fast growth is due partly to immigration as a result of the Town Development Act and, in the case of Peterborough, the New Towns Act. It is due also, to an extent, to ordinary growth, which I can only call "magnetic" growth because this is an attractive area, which is expanding rapidly. It is also due to our having about the highest birth rate in England. The combination of these factors produces great social and financial problems for the local authorities, especially in education, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) pointed out.
The other side of the coin is that those developments under the Town Development Act and the New Towns Act are intended to ease the problems of the metropolitan authorities by passing them on to the receiving authorities. That sort of development is the main cause of our problems.

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Under the Town Development Act and the New Towns Act some financial help is given towards housing and infrastructure but not towards education. This enormous education burden has been increasing rapidly for some years and is still increasing fast. It is largely in relation to that burden that the rate support grant is so important for us.
It is most unfair that even those cities, including London, which shift their problems on to the counties should be better treated than us for the purposes of the rate support grant. It is not disputed by anyone that there are problems, and sometimes very acute ones, for the urban areas but the rate support grant is not the best way of solving these problems financially, especially when it means helping them at the expense of those authorities which are already trying to help solve part of the problems.
Cambridgeshire spends less per person than the average non-metropolitan county. I do not have a comparative figure for the metropolitan authorities. Our assessed needs increase, as they are bound to do, through the large number of children of school age. The net result of the method of calculation chosen by the Secretary of State is, therefore, that the fastest growing county appears to be suffering the greatest reduction of grant, and that is because, without going into all the complicated matters involved, a statistical quirk which has a flavour of gerrymandering is taking pride of place and is pushing both equity and logic into the background.
Mr. Shore: The right hon. and learned Gentleman used the phrase "a flavour of gerrymandering". Would he care to substantiate that? It is not the language that is normally used.
Sir D. Renton: I do not want to repeat what my hon. Friends have already said with great force and clarity about the remarkable coincidence of the help given to those constituencies which are represented by Labour Members compared to those which are represented by Members of other parties. Are we asked to assume that there is nothing whatever in this?
Mr. Shore: Yes. All the facts are fed into a computer. I do not know whether
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the right hon. and learned Gentleman has any idea what a computer does with these massive loads of facts—
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: What is the programme?
Mr. Shore: Come, come!
Sir D. Renton: If a computer has produced this remarkable coincidence—
Mr. Sainsbury: Is my right hon. and learned Friend familiar with one of the best-known expressions of the computer world—GIGO? It means "garbage in, garbage out".
Sir D. Renton: I do not have the experience of or the faith in computers that some people possess. I was about to suggest that instead of putting his trust in computers which produce the most extraordinary statistics which financial statistics experts and the local authorities find it exceedingly difficult to fathom, the Secretary of State should act in accordance with a simple assessment in accordance with equity and social justice applied to the needs of different areas.
If the inner city areas need special treatment of a quite different character from that given to the counties, there should be other ways of helping them. After all, those areas which are particularly affected by the rapid Commonwealth immigration of the last 12 years or so are entitled to special financial provisions. That is the right way to handle those sorts of problems. It is done through us all as taxpayers but to afflict innocent ratepayers in the non-metropolitan counties in the way that is proposed, especially when they have problems of rapid growth, seems to me to be quite wrong. If that is the answer that the computer is giving, I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman tries another method.
Another factor but of a felicitous nature—I agree that it is marginal and not as important as education—is that we tend to be very long-lived people in Huntingdonshire—indeed, that applies throughout East Anglia. We have to spend plenty of money in caring for the aged. I should not like to see a reduction in the services that are provided for them.
There are many matters that require increased expenditure in these hard years

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of inflation. The local authorities are faced with a choice of three evils, plus one option that I do not regard as an evil. They can increase the rates up to 23 per cent. I gather that is the figure that has been given by the Government. Alternatively, they can raid their dwindling balances, not ignoring what the Government may order them to do by way of maintaining them. In fact, their balances have dwindled since the reorganisation of local government. Thirdly, they can cut services, or slash them, if "slash" is preferred. I must point out that the county police forces have already been slashed to the bone, including the Cambridgeshire force.
There are therefore the three options, each of them involving a choice of evils. Perhaps a bit of each of them will have to be chosen. The further option is one that I should not like to discourage. The Secretary of State would not wish it to be discouraged, either. It is the option of the authorities trying to look for further economies. They will be forced to do that if salaries in local government are to be controlled, negotiated and imposed from the centre. If salaries increase sharply—we know that there are pressures in spite of the Government's wages policies—the authorities will have to make further economies and certain personnel redundant. I should not wish to discourage the Cambridgeshire County Council or other authorities operating in my constituency from making whatever economies they have to make to try to prevent great increases in rates. Whatever they do, they will eventually incur the displeasure of the ratepayers.
The people should be told where the blame lies. It lies not with the local authorities, which are doing their best to provide the services that Parliament requires them to provide and which the people need. The blame lies with the Government, who have made inflation worse by overspending at the centre and have diverted to the cities too large a share of the rate support grant. That is most discouraging for the counties.
This is an unsatisfactory method of procedure. I know that the rate support grant system has continued for a long time and that it is purported to have been negotiated by all concerned, but the process takes place a long way from Parliament. We are presented with a fait
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accompli of a most complicated sort in an order which, in effect, alters the law. We have no control over it. We have no opportunity of amending. Those of us who are involved in the interesting work of the Select Committee on Practice and Procedure—as is the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury—should in due course come to consider whether it is right that the law should be changed in this way, and whether it is right that Parliament should be presented with this sort of fait accompli, especially the sort that we have on this occasion.
9.20 p.m.
Mr. Ronald Brown: The usual standard of courtesy of the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) fell a little when he accused my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment of gerrymandering. The right hon. and learned Gentleman followed a little too closely his hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), who is a past master at that sort of thing. We remember his having to apologise for misleading the House. Therefore, I urge the right hon. and learned Gentleman not to follow the hon. Gentleman's practice, which is not nice.
I join in congratulating my right hon. Friend on the rate support grant that he has produced in the documents that we are considering. We have been fighting to secure London's rightful share of the grant for many years. In the early days we did not have so many eager beavers supporting us. We fought hard, but nothing happened until my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) took the point and introduced the London needs element into the analysis, thus producing the first fair result for London. Equalisation between the London boroughs, which had been carried out because of the inequities, was then no longer necessary. This year my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been able to make the decision towards which we were all working.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) referred to the absence of my right hon. Friend at one point. What intrigues me is that all the London Conservative Members are absent. Where are the hon. Members for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) and St. Marylebone (Mr.

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Baker)? One would have expected them to be here, commending my right hon. Friend on his work for the London boroughs, which has received the support of Labour and Conservative boroughs. We do not even have with us the London Front Bench spokesman for the Opposition, the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi), who could give his colleagues help and guidance about the importance of London.
Apart from my hon. Friends the Members for Islington, South and Finsbury, and Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller), we have heard from no London Member. London Conservative Members recognise the value of the order, but have chosen to stay away and leave it to their hon. Friends to pretend that London is being given an unfair advantage. The right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of the rich people of London gaining, but my hon. Friends pointed out the facts.
I should like to take the matter a stage further. Opposition Members were able to have the figures that they gave because my right hon. Friend has continued the clawback principle of 1975–76 and 1976–77. In 1976–77 he will have clawed back £210 million and in 1977–78 he is to claw back £403 million. Whereas in 1976–77 the figure was only 33⅓ per cent. of the so-called resource advantage, by 1977–78 it will be 62½ per cent.
Sir David Renton: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would wish to make sure whether he should give credit to his right hon. Friend or his right hon. Friend's computer.
Mr. Brown: I am not concerned with discussing the question whether my right hon. Friend did it with his matches, which was the 1963 method of doing these things, or with up-to-date machinery. The right hon. and learned Gentleman must remember that London is still not receiving what it is entitled to. All that the rate support grant has done is to show London what it should have. What London is getting is very much less than that.
Some tribute could have been paid by Opposition Members to the fact that London is not to get what it is entitled to, for the third year running. It is a little unusual to hear hon. Members
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opposite constantly referring to rich London and profligacy and overspending by London when I have shown that London is not getting what it is entitled to. My hon. Friends have shown that the amount of rates paid in London is far greater—twice as much in some cases—than that paid in areas for which hon. Members opposite have spoken.
Mr. Stephen Ross: This is the second time we have heard that statement. Surely the situation is a reflection of the fact that there are higher rateable values in London. The people there do not have commuter fares to pay, and the cost of living is higher in London than in my constituency.
Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman's assumption is not correct. Very many of my constituents do not work in London. London is losing work. Many of my constituents have to travel to outer areas. The person living in a two-bedroomed flat in my constituency is paying more rates than hon. Members living in the shire counties in their mansions. I have been through this story many times, and I would be happy to give the figures. I can show them that a council flat in my constituency pays far more in rates. That must be taken into account.
In paragraph 45, the order gives the impression that the London boroughs are happy to accept that there is justification for the clawback in their case. But the London Boroughs Association has informed me that it does not accept that the clawback is justified. It says that it appreciates that there has to be some gradualness in the matter and that it is prepared to co-operate in the exercise, but it would not like it to be thought that it believed the situation to be just. It believes it to be unjust to the people of London.
I pay tribute to the local government people who have worked so hard on this matter, including Sir Robert Thomas, of Manchester, and Sir Lou Sherman, of London. They have worked very hard with the Department to get a Rate Support Grant Order which is as reasonably just as possible to everyone. However, the rate support grant will never be absolutely just to everyone.
Over the years, my hon. Friends and I have complained bitterly about London's

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situation, but we never heard from hon. Members opposite in those days when we were unable to get justice for London. We did not hear then the arguments which they have adduced tonight. It was we who were adducing them then. Hon. Members opposite did not care because it was not happening to them. They were not suffering in the sense that London was and still is suffering. Now they are grumbling because they think they are not getting everything that they think they should have.
The hon. Member for Henley said that the London borough of Havering assumed that it was going to get £700,000 more than it is getting. That was an odd piece of accountancy. It started off in September with an assumption for the following April. Those of us with experience would not have made the fundamental error of assuming in September, long before the grant had been determined, that one would get £700,000 more for the year beginning the following March.
We understand the reason for the claw-back, but the important thing for us is the so-called excess resources of London, which are quoted frequently. But if we in London were to exploit our rateable resources, we would have such an intolerable rate burden—which is already much higher than in the rest of the country—that we could not possibly contemplate such action.
Therefore, the resources in London are purely paper resources. They can never be used. The rates being paid in my constituency by ordinary working-class people are already far too high. To try to exploit rateable values would make things impossible for them. I hope that the House will understand that the resources in London can be only a guide. They cannot be used to try to prove that there is a reservoir of financial opportunity of which local government in London is not taking advantage.
I do not wish to delay the House for much longer. I am satisfied that for this year my right hon. Friend has attempted to be just. I resent the imputations from Opposition Members. I have had my rows with my right hon. Friend. We shall be having another row on the Water Charges Equalisation Bill. I, too, dissent from it. Once again, we have heard not
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a word from the Opposition about that, not a sound about what is unfair in that Bill. In my constituency—and in my right hon. Friend's constituency—which is already burdened with the increased costs of this industry, people will have to bear very much higher rates in the pound than they bore last year, and soon they will be asked to suffer a further burden—but only those who happen not to have a metered supply and who are in the old Metropolitan Water Board area. All the private companies within London are being exempted. Industries that are metered are being exempted. All the commercial premises that are being metered are being exempted. Therefore, the burden will fall on only a very limited number of people. In my view, they are not able to bear it.
In conclusion, I put my right hon. Friend on notice that although I congratulate him very much on the way in which he has attempted to be fair in this rate support grant, I must tell him that I hope that he has second thoughts about bringing forward the Water Charges Equalisation Bill and will not put many of us in the difficult position of having to challenge him on the Floor of the House in that respect when we realise that he has worked very hard to help us in this respect.
Several Hon. Members rose——
Mr. Speaker: Order. Perhaps I may explain my difficulty to the House. Thirteen hon. Members and one right hon. Member wish to speak in the debate. I presume that the winding-up speeches will probably begin at 11 o'clock. I have just indicated to the Front Benches a quarter of an hour each for them. Even so, it will be exceedingly difficult to call everyone who still wishes to speak, so I appeal for shorter speeches if possible.
9.33 p.m.
Sir John Hall: I hope that the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown) will understand if, in view of Mr. Speaker's request, I do not follow what he has said, except to comment on the Water Charges Equalisation Bill and to say that many Members who have constituencies in the Thames Water Board area will be happy to join him in any opposition that he Wishes to put forward against that Bill when it comes before the House.

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I support the Secretary of State in his efforts to reduce and control local authority expenditure. I agree at once that one cannot do that without it causing some pain. I remember that when I made my maiden speech I quoted from Colbert. The art of taxation is like the art of plucking a goose. One has to try to pluck it with the minimum number of squawks from the goose. One gets many squawks if one increases taxation.
I am sure that the Secretary of State would agree with the old maxim that taxation, to be acceptable, must be seen to be fair. That is a maxim that is honoured more often in the breach than in the observance, as can be seen by the protests and the avoidance of taxation which occur in this country, which is a commentary on the fairness or unfairness of the fiscal system, to which we take exception. But the unfairness of the income tax system is as nothing compared with the unfairness of the rating system. The rating system takes very little account of ability to pay. It falls with different ferocity on various areas depending on the way in which the rate support grant is to operate, and except on very limited occasions it is almost impossible to avoid.
I make no excuse for returning to a point that I made earlier in an intervention when I referred to the effect on local authorities of the Government's penalisation of the "just and the unjust fellow", to quote an old poem, to which several Opposition Members have referred already.
I wonder whether the Secretary of State understands the effect upon councillors of what seems to them this very unjust reaction of the Government. Buckinghamshire and other councillors have tried hard to meet the Government's demands and to keep their expenditure within the guidelines laid down. They have had agonising conferences with other councillors and officials. In many cases, they have incurred a great deal of local unpopularity following the cuts in essential services which they have had to make. Now they find that they need not have bothered. It would have been much better if they had done nothing of the kind and had gone on, not spending extravangantly but maintaining their services as they were without incurring the
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odium involved in trying to restrict and economise, because they find councils and authorities which have done nothing are penalised no more than they are. That is the kind of injustice which creates bitterness.
The Secretary of State has said time and again that he expects the average increase in rates throughout the country to be about 15 per cent. We understand, indeed anybody who stops to think about it understands, that an average means that some will pay less and others will pay more. However, the average ratepayer, when he finds that the increase in his rates is not 15 per cent. but 30 per cent., will condemn not the Government but the local authority forced to impose the additional rate. The unpopularity will fall not where it belongs, on the Government, but on the local authority, which has little or no option, unless it drastically reduces its social services and the other services for which it is responsible, although in many cases it may have already reduced them to a point where, to reduce them further, will have the most serious effect.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Surely local authorities, just like private employers, cannot afford to do this because of redundancy and employment protection measures.
Sir J. Hall: My hon. Friend has a point.
The Government have attempted to justify the variations between the authorities by claiming that the formula which they use takes account of spending or expenditure needs. I refer the Secretary of State to the wise words addressed by the March Hare to Alice. The March Hare pointed out "To say what you mean is not the same as to mean what you say". The March Hare could have gone on to point out to Alice "To spend what you need is not the same as needing what you spend". The present formula is an invitation to local authorities to spend more this year so that they can get a bigger grant next year. It is a curious way of encouraging economy in local authorities.
The effect upon Buckinghamshire has already been clearly explained by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison). Buckinghamshire, taking heed of the Government's request, has already

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cut back quite severely on many services—educational provision, administration, highway maintenance, which is giving hostage to fortune to the future, building maintenance and social services. With the cut-back of £9·7 million in the rate support grant, it faces the prospect of making savage and, to many people, unthinkable further cuts in the services for which it is responsible, or facing the ratepayers of the county with the kind of swingeing increase to which we have, unfortunately, become accustomed in the past few years.
Mr. Ronald Bell: My hon. Friend has mentioned the question of economies. Does he agree that when he refers to Buckinghamshire he means the county council? I believe that the balances maintained by the counties are, on average, 5 per cent. of gross spending, whereas the balances currently maintained by district councils are about 23 per cent. of gross spending. Therefore, the Government, through their formula, have forced the cuts and economies in county services, namely, education, welfare and highways, not merely last year, but this year.
Sir J. Hall: My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) is correct. The cuts forced on the county council in the extremely important service of education are by far the most important. I am bitterly opposed to a reduction in the basic essentials of education. If we cut back drastically on educational expenditure, we shall pay dearly for it. This is the choice that will face the county, which must take such steps, or impose an increased domestic rate of between 25 per cent. and 30 per cent. on ratepayers.
My constituents ask me "How do the Government arrive at these extraordinary variations between metropolitan boroughs and English and Welsh counties? What is the formula?" One tries to explain the situation, but it is impossible. Even the experts in local authorities, such as the county treasurers and others, are unable to understand the situation. One can only come to the conclusion that the formula adopted is to think of a number and double it. Some of the variations appear to be incomprehensible. This is not a question that I have been able to examine carefully because the formula is beyond me. I have tried to find
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out how it works from those who are so-called experts in this area of activity, but so far without success.
My constituents also say "Are the Government imposing these heavy burdens on us because they think that Buckinghamshire is a rich county?" If this was suggested to the workers of High Wycombe, a manufacturing town, they would laugh in your face.
Many commuters in the Wycombe area have had to bear the brunt of the mortgage increases and have faced a number of savage rail fare rises in recent years. Many are finding it impossible to make ends meet since their incomes have been almost frozen and their tax burdens appear to increase all the time. This order will comprise another form of tax and the worst feature of this particular tax is that it has little relation to the income of the person affected.
Mr. George Cunningham: The average cash payment for rates in regard to domestic ratepayers in my constituency is £148 a year. What is the figure in the hon. Gentleman's constituency?
Sir J. Hall: If the hon. Gentleman is referring to the average amount of rates payable per household I would have to search my memory for the figure, but I think that the average in my constituency as a whole would be in excess of the figure mentioned by him, namely, about £150.
Mr. George Cunningham: It is much more than that.
Sir J. Hall: I may be wrong. I am quoting from memory. Apart from the effect of the rate increase on the individuals, the effect on small businesses is considerable. Many small businesses have been existing on the margins for a long time. This additional rate will push many of them over the edge. Small businesses are finding it impossible to meet continuing rising costs and this order will make the situation even more difficult.
To summarise the situation, it can be said that the vast majority of metropolitan districts are below and some well below the national average. The vast majority of English and Welsh counties are above the national average. The people of the shires will think they are being grossly discriminated against, and they will be right. The more cynical of

811
my constituents will believe that the formula has been adjusted for political reasons. Nobody who knows the Secretary of State will think that such a thought would enter his head.
I am sure that I can tell my constituents with authority that this has not been done for any political reason. It has been done as a result of a formula, carefully worked out, which I do not understand but perhaps someone else does. But it is not for political reasons and I would not accuse the Secretary of State of that.
I shall speak finally of my constituents in Buckinghamshire, who want to impress on the Secretary of State, if he needs impressing, that they feel unjustly treated. An illustrious son of Buckinghamshire, John Hampden raised the flag of revolt against the Government of the day because he objected to the ship tax. In common with other citizens he thought that a pernicious tax.
Today, we do not rise in armed revolt when we do not like a tax although we have far more reason to do so than had our ancestors. We try to adopt a more rational, reasonable approach and we try to convince the Government by argument that the taxes are unjust and burdensome. I hope that the Secretary of State will take these arguments into account and not force us one day to repeat past history.
9.47 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop: This is a natural opportunity for everyone in the House to raise his constituency problems. Rightly, hon. Members put before the House the way in which the rate support grant affects their constituents. What I find offensive is the way in which Conservative Members cloak their constituency concern in the enunciation of great principles when we are discussing practical problems. I should have thought that it was beneath at least some hon. Members to raise such cynical issues. Naturally, Conservative Members have expressed their dissatisfaction with the elements of the proposals that have been disadvantageous to their constituents. That is a perfectly natural and normal situation, but it is by no means exclusive to those on the Opposition Benches. As was pointed out, Conservative Members representing London constituencies, who are noticeably absent tonight, benefited as much as Labour Members representing constituencies in London.
Sir Anthony Royle: Perhaps the hon. Member has not noticed that the hon. Member for Richmond, Surrey is present.
Mr. Blenkinsop: Naturally one welcomes late arrivals, however late. The general point stands, however. Some ridiculous points were made by Conservative Members about the element provided for in the unemployment grant, as though that was benefiting only Labour-held constituencies. On the contrary, this applies throughout the country. The provision is not peculiar to one area.
The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) opened the debate in his usual superficial and swashbuckling style. He is not yet sufficiently run-in on this subject to understand some of the problems. I do not know how some Conservative Members have the neck to object to the complications of these grant proposals. They are always complex and difficult to follow, but at least these were presented in decent time. Our experience of the last Conservative Government was that they were not even available at the end of the ordinary financial year in March, and that the new authorities that were taking over still did not know in February or March of that year how they stood. They were faced with a problem of trying to calculate what to do with proposals as complicated as—or, in my view, more complicated than—the proposals that we have here.
Mr. Ronald Brown: In terms of cynical political decisions, I remind my hon. Friend that in those days those of us who were chairmen of finance committees were unable to find out from the then Department of Housing and Local Government what the rate support grant was likely to be so that we could make our estimates correctly. We genuinely believed then that it was being held back for political reasons.
Mr. Blenkinsop: That is absolutely true. The utter incompetence of the Administration of that time put an impossible strain on local authority staff and elected councillors. I am glad that, since we have had a change of Administration, this has never been repeated, and we have had proposals brought forward in good time to give Members of Parliament and local authorities proper opportunity to prepare their proposals.

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The orders impose a harsh but not insupportable discipline on local authorities. Any Opposition Member who imagines urban areas, such as my constituency, are receiving some measure of largesse from the Government is wildly mistaken. It is misleading for hon. Members to give the size of rate increases that may have to be imposed without taking account of the level from which the increases start. We are concerned with the total payment that has to be made. Urban areas, by their very nature and the nature of their problems, alas, start from a very much higher level of rate payments than do most of the areas represented by Opposition Members present. No one should imagine that urban areas are being favourably treated so as to encourage a vast new spending spree, or anything of that nature.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) pointed out, it is very unwise not to recognise the real problems that any Government would face in trying to differentiate between local authorities which, it is said, have taken a responsible attitude towards their spending commitments and have attempted more than others to hold down the level of spending as against those which, as some hon. Members say, have been profligate. How does one determine profligacy? Over what period should it be determined? It would be unreal to take one year out of context with other years.
Sir Anthony Royle rose——
Mr. Blenkinsop: No, I shall not give way. I want to make sure that other hon. Members have an opportunity to speak, and the hon. Gentleman came into the Chamber only very recently.
It is essential to recognise the complexity of trying to examine each local authority's case. It would ultimately require the imposition of some diktat from the centre. That would perhaps be attractive to some, but it is unwise for Opposition Members to try to maintain that there is some principle here that is being disregarded by my right hon. Friend which would be perfectly practicable to carry through.
Some of us who read accounts of speeches made by my right hon Friend
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about the needs of inner urban areas were concerned lest he interpret inner urban areas to narrowly. Some of us have felt that in the long term their serious problems, such as loss of population and many others, can be solved only within a wider context.
I am glad that this rate support grant can be taken as some indication of the view of the Secretary of State, and I am glad that he is looking at urban problems in a wider sense. Although the Secretary of State is imposing a real and hard burden on urban authorities, it is one that is accepted by most of them as a reasonable burden in the current situation.
I agree with the Secretary of State that some of those who have criticised cuts and restrictions in local authority spending have begun complaining before their own areas have even been touched. After all, the position now is that there have been several years of considerable expansion in the employment of local authority staff and the development of services. It is therefore reasonable that with the current pressures on the country we should accept the restrictions imposed by the Government. Most of us recognise that although the solution is not ideal it is reasonable and fair.
9.56 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Jones: I listened to the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) with considerable interest. I hope that I shall carry him with me in some of the comments that I wish to make on the subject before the House tonight.
It is generally recognised that standards of services are essentially determined and controlled by central Government and not by local authorities. This applies at least to major services. Therefore councils have requirements placed upon them for increasingly high levels and more costly standards of service. For example, there has been an increase in the school leaving age from 15 years to 16 years, the expansion of nursery education, the creation of social service departments, and higher standards required in public protection services.
But there has not been an adequate admission by the Government of their responsibility. The Government cannot

815
claim to have been unaware of the effects of their legislation. Evidence leads us to the conclusion that they have not been prepared to recognise the financial effects of their policy decisions. The lack of co-ordination, indeed what appears almost to be a spirit of competition to expand services by central Government departments, has been a continuing feature of the post-war period, unchecked and almost unmonitored by the Treasury.
In assessing the problems of local authorities since the introduction of the rate support grant arrangements by the 1966 Local Government Act—the arrangements have been operative since 1966–68—it is interesting to look at the outturn of budgeted and actual expenditure. That can be done by examining comparative figures based on negotiated settlements for the rate support grant. The information which I shall give was prepared from the report on the Rate Support Grant Order 1975, and was published jointly by the local authority associations last January.
On approved expenditure, which was £2,619 million in the first year, 1967–68, and which has risen to £11,717 million for 1977–78, it is interesting to see the overspending and under-spending figures over an eight-year period up to 1974–75. The figures I give include the increases under the Rate Support Grant (Increase) Orders.
During 1974–75 approved expenditure was £7,283 million. During the eight-year period from 1967–68 to 1974–75 there were five years in which there was over-spending and three years in which the local authorities under-spent the figure used in the rate support grant arrangements. In the first year there was over-spending of £44 million, which represented 1·7 per cent. of the total. In 1968–69 there was £49 million overspending, representing 1·8 per cent. In 1969–70 there was £31 million under-spending and a similar figure for 1970–71, representing 1 per cent. and 0·9 per cent. respectively. In 1971–72 there was overspending of £51 million, representing 1·2 per cent. In 1972–73 there was overspending of £77 million—1·6 per cent. In 1973–74 there was under-spending of £31 million—0·5 per cent. In 1974–75—
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the year of local government reform—there was over-spending of £396 million, representing 5·4 per cent. of the total.
The 1975–76 and 1976–77 figures are not available. The latest information indicates that in both years the outturn is likely to be about 2 per cent. above the settlement figures. The year of reorganization —1974–75—presented peculiar difficulties for the negotiators on both sides, in that figures had to be agreed before the new authorities were formed and before the division of functions and responsibilities was determined.
The year 1974–75 apart, it is a remarkably competent achievement that the aggregate net expenditure of more than 400 authorities—and prior to reorganisation more than 1,200 authorities —should have conformed so closely to the guidelines set by central Government. That is a remarkable tribute to the average local government outturn. Would that Westminster and Whitehall had an equally good record.
Turning to a particular question in the grant arrangement for next year, paragraph 14 of the statement made by the Secretary of State for the Environment, following a meeting of the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance in London on 22nd November, is as follows:
"The formula should therefore help those areas with severe social problems such as the major urban areas."
There has been considerable comment on that subject today.
The shift of grant aid to inner city areas has led to widespread comment and criticism that ratepayers as a whole throughout England and Wales will be required to make a significant cash contribution. Is that equitable? Ratepayers who are in no way responsible for the problems of inner cities and who derive no direct benefit from their rehabilitation should not in my judgment be required to contribute to a possible solution.
The disastrous situation in some inner city areas stems from misdirected policies by the councils concerned. Some have undertaken schemes of redevelopment involving vast clearance areas without ensuring that the necessary funds were

817
available for their rehabilitation. That has happened in one city and town after another and has permitted a rundown of areas awaiting development.
The issue is now of such great urgency, and resources within local government are so limited, that in my view central Government funds on a vast scale will be required if there is to be any likelihood of progress being made. The cost should not be laid at the door of the ratepayers. Capital resources should be made available by a roll-over of existing Government investment, for example, in the new towns. For 17 new towns, by way of example, expenditure on industrial premises totals £78·75 million and on commercial premises £45·6 million. Investments of a similar character for which the New Towns Commission is responsible in respect of Crawley, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead and Welwyn Garden City amount to £91·7 million and £53·3 million respectively. These figures are at historic values and these investments could well realise between £500 million and £750 million.
It is only ideological considerations and a determination to extend State Socialism at all costs that prevents the enlightened use of these vast resources which could be utilised to revitalise desolate inner city areas including the London docklands. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) said in this respect—that the Government should look for ways and means to encourage the private involvement of institutional funds in these inner city areas.
I turn to the Secretary of State's prediction that the support grant arrangements this year will have the effect of raising rates on average by only some 15 per cent. We have had examples in one county after another. I would quote my own constituency county, Northamptonshire. The estimate there is that the increase cannot be less than 20 per cent., at the same time combined with a reduction in the standard of some services.
Mr. George Cunningham: Would the hon. Gentleman tell the House what the average domestic ratepayer in his constituency pays now in actual cash terms?
Mr. Jones: I estimate that in cash terms the average domestic ratepayer in my constituency is paying between £175 and £225 a year.
Mr. George Cunningham: That is rubbish.
Mr. Jones: Apart from the particular direction of resources to the inner city areas, the general effect of the proposals for next year is to shift the burden from central Government funds and the taxpayer to local government funds and the ratepayer. The Association of District Councils, in a recent letter which I think other hon. Members received, commented:
"the reduction of 4½ per cent. is, in our view, grossly unfair to ratepayers and is in effect no more than a book-keeping exercise which will do nothing to reduce the totality of public expenditure. It is in effect central government transferring more of the financial liabilities for local services from the taxpayer to the ratepayer".
The proposals in the Rate Support Grant Order 1976 are to some extent a cover-up exercise—further manifestations of the Government's policy of shifting around the burden of central Government expenditure. In turn the burden has fallen on private industry with two massive increases in social security payments; the extension of nationalisation, on the one hand, in the aircraft and shipbuilding and repair industries and its reduction, on the other, by the proposed sale of British Petroleum shares.
We have a further example in the order before the House this evening—a material burden of expenditure being removed from central Government funds on to local government and the ratepayer.
I predict that this Government, determined to stay in office at any cost whoever foots the bill, will not be saved by manipulations of this character.
10.9 p.m.
Mr. Stephen Ross: Until the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) spoke I thought that we were having a battle royal between the London boroughts and the Home Counties.

819
I am grateful that I have been called to speak. I would reminisce with the hon. Member for South Shields because I was Chairman of the Policy and Resources Committee when we tried to find out from the Government early in 1974 what money we would get. I well remember the great difficulties that we faced. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is a good thing that the rate support grant is known in good time. It is something in the Government's favour.
I assure the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown) that I interrupted the Secretary of State during his speech on the very point about water charges in Wales. I assure the hon. Gentleman that as a representative of a constituency in the Southern Water Authority catchment area I am virtually certain that we shall be going along with him in opposition to the Water Charges Equalisation Bill.
I join the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) in openly admitting that I find rate support grants a complete mystery, despite the fact that I was supposed to present the accounts to my local council and constituents at one time. The order starts by referring to acres and then goes immediately on to hectares. Therefore, I wonder whether the calculations are soundly based.
I do not seek to challenge the Government's decision to reduce the rate support grant by 4½ per cent., but I strongly object to the method of distribution. One has only to look at the information provided by the Association of County Councils, which is based on mation provided by the Association of the Environment, to illustrate how unfairly the proposed needs element settlement has fallen on different authorities. We are told:
"If the average rate rise were 15 per cent. … ratepayers in Cumbria, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire would face rises of the order of 25 per cent. caused by the grant distribution whilst Knowsley, Liverpool, South Tyneside and Wolverhampton would not have to raise their rates by more than 4 per cent. to 5 per cent."
These are the anomalies which come from the settlement.
As one county council treasurer put it to me recently,
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"the concept of past expenditure as a measure of need is thoroughly discredited. The fact that each new needs element formula is 'damped' by the part-use of previous formulae makes the whole process pretty wet anyway. A service industry called "The Rate Support Grant Industry' has been created which only serves authorities who (by sheer accident) find they receive a larger share of total grant under each year's new formula."
My authority, which I think is the smallest in England—it did not actually ask to be a separate county; it wanted to be a county borough—has lost over £1 million due to the combination of the new needs element formula and the reduction in grant. The county has an increasing school population—over 18,000—and still rising slightly—and an above average number of pensioners—between 23 per cent. to 25 per cent. of the population. The problem can be resolved only by an increase in the domestic rate of over 15 per cent., more savage cuts than average—we are having plenty of them already—or a bigger reduction in our balances, which are dangerously low now. Having been a member of the county council for seven years between 1967–68 and 1973–74, I regret that the county did not have a massive spending spree in those years. It should have spent as much as it could. It would certainly have been better off had it done so.
We have a ridiculous, insulting situation. The Isle of Wight does not have an indoor heated swimming pool. However, £315,000 is now being spent on the provision of a recreational complex at Camp Hill Prison, to which my constituents do not have access. We should have spent the money in the past. We have not a hope in Hell of ever getting our pool now.
I remind London Members that the Isle of Wight has taken pensioners from the London area. The Greater London Council has permission to put up some 200 homes on the island, and many are there now. Those pensioners' needs will fall on the social services in some respects, so we face increasing difficulties.
No one has yet referred to the North. For example, North Yorkshire faces a probable rate increase of 25 per cent., although it has already made cuts of £5·6 million. The West Yorkshire County Council has already gobbled up £5

821
million of a special reserve. Only £414,500 is left in the contingency fund.
I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not in his place, because I wish to refer to his constituency—Stepney and Poplar. I do not wish to be party political. The right hon. Gentleman asked why some of us got worked up over differences between the allocations to the inner urban areas and the shire counties and provincial towns.
Yesterday I was in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. Whilst there, I picked up a leaflet with the heading
"Have a holiday with the Council."
I do not object to the fact that Tower Hamlets owns holiday homes or hotels in Sandgate, Kent, Southsea, Hampshire, and St. Leonards, Sussex, but not in the Isle of Wight. It offers elderly people reduced price holidays. I live in a holiday area, but many of my constituents want to go on holiday and a great many elderly people in my part of the world would like reduced price holidays. That may be one reason why rates are higher in Tower Hamlets.
Then we read in the Press that 20 councillors from Tower Hamlets have spent about £1,000 on a holiday in their hotel at Hastings deciding their future policies. Perhaps that is another reason why rates are higher in London.
Another question which I am asked more and more often by elderly people is "Why cannot we travel free on buses during the day? Why do we not have concessionary fares as they do in London and other cities?" Many people have retired to my constituency, and this is a sore point with them. But we are likely to have to wipe out concessionary fares altogether. We do little enough as it is. We set aside only £23,000, and I think that this time it will have to go. We cannot go on doing it, and this is yet another reason why people are getting extremely worked up about the rate increases in many of our rural areas. We cannot even staff adequately our new short-stay home.
I wish to put two specific questions to the Minister. The first is to ask him why the Isle of Wight, together with East and West Sussex, is excluded from the £2·24
822
per head above-average allocation for labour costs added to the needs element. We understand that the Isle of Wight is out because, apparently, there is an absence of suitable statistics. I can tell the Minister that we shall soon provide them, because this is costing us £250,000 and we want to get back into the act.
My second question is to ask what happens in the resources element, which includes an allowance for parishes, paid to districts which do not have parish councils? Is it included, or is a deduction made for districts without parish councils?
There are problems enough for local authorities, and we ought already to be facing the inevitability of further local government reform. It has to come. I had hoped to see the Government actively encouraging the amalgamation of authorities, where it made sense to do it, to the single-tier county borough status. They should be encouraged to get together to see whether they can make reductions. I am sure that staff reductions could be made in that way. I agree that reductions must come in administration. These problems must be faced. There have to be cuts in some of the top tier where people are not fully employed. However, the unfairness of the spread of the settlement could and should have been avoided. I feel that this RSG settlement should be opposed by the House.
10.18 p.m.
Mr. D. E. Thomas: I am sure that the House will understand if most of my remarks are directed to the Under-Secretary of State for Wales.
I wish to make a number of general comments and to endorse some of the criticisms that have been made about the way in which the rate support grant is allocated from year to year. I think it is fair to describe the grant allocation itself as a blunt instrument whose edges are carefully refined every year. That is how the system seems to operate.
We have a system based on existing patterns of spending to which additional weightings by means of different formulae are set annually. This cannot hope to reflect the real needs if those are to be defined in objective terms.

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One can criticise in this way and then reply by saying that at least in this area there is an attempt to an objective allocation of resources, whereas there are many other areas of social policy where we are not doing this. For example, the Government have only recently started to reallocate resources between the various health authorities and various health districts, and working parties in the DHSS, the Welsh Office and the Scottish Office have been looking at the balance of resources and searching for objective criteria. Here at least some objective criteria exist in terms of a variation on the basis of historic patterns of spending.
Although I can criticise the general way in which the RSG formula operates, I do not want to argue tonight that additional resources should not be allocated to the inner city areas. I want to stress instead that I do not believe that resources for the inner city areas, such as London, should be obtained from the low-income counties, such as all the Welsh counties except one.
If there is to be a reallocation of public expenditure to the inner cities, that should not have to come from within local government spending but should be reallocated from elsewhere. I have opposed public expenditure cuts in all areas of social policy, and I am, therefore, at least being consistent. We have heard some hon. Members on the Opposition Benches who are keen advocates of public expenditure cuts in the broader sense suddenly standing up as keen advocates for not reducing public expenditure when it affects the ratepayers in their constituencies.
The Welsh counties next year will face increases greater than the 15 per cent. average rise in England and Wales. Starting from the bottom, we see that Mid-Glamorgan, which will be under the control of Plaid Cymru after next May, will have a 16 per cent. increase. Clwyd will have a 17 per cent. increase.
Mr. Colin Shepherd: Does the hon. Member recall that in March 1974 the Welsh received a very substantial flat-rate rate support grant which substantially changes the basis of comparison with the English counties?
Mr. Thomas: I am not talking about the domestic element in the relief. I will come to that later. I am talking about the percentage increase in each of the Welsh counties. The increase for South Glamorgan will be 17 per cent., for Powis 18 per cent., for West Glamorgan 20 per cent., for Gwynedd 21 per cent., for Gwent 21 per cent., and for Dyfed 24 per cent.
I am concerned that every Welsh ratepayer has to face an increase greater than the England and Wales average next year, and that ratepayers in the counties which have a lower level of income and a lower rating base, because of the scarcity of manufacturing industry and large commercial enterprises, will have to bear most of the increase in rates.
Earlier the Secretary of State stressed that the rate rebate scheme was available in order to mitigate the effects of rate increases, particularly in low-income areas. However, I should like Ministers to look again at their figures of the take-up of the rate rebate schemes. A substantial proportion of those eligible for rate rebates—I believe it is now in excess of 30 per cent. or 40 per cent. of those eligible—do not take up those benefits. The Under-Secretary will be familiar with this state of affairs from his experience in the Department of Health and Social Security.
I am concerned that low-income families and pensioners in Gwynedd and Dafyd will be faced with massive rate increases but will be unwilling or unable to claim rate rebate or simply will not know about the scheme. Some of them will be pushed about between the DHSS local office and the rates office of the district council, and at the end of that the difference in benefit could be no more than 50p either way.
The average increase will, therefore, be greater than in England and Wales, and, in spite of the substantial need for services, services will be curtailed. I was at a school in Dyfed on Monday. That part of the county has to go comprehensive, but I was told that it cannot hope to go comprehensive for at least five or six years because the necessary resources were not available.
In Clwyd we have seen threats of withdrawal of labour and other industrial action by teacher unions because of the extremely high pupil-teacher ratios.

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We are seeing a reduction in the net amount of Government resources available to the counties at a time when demand is increasing due to the modernisation of the education service involved in going comprehensive and the more efficient level of service in education arising from reduced teacher-pupil ratios. We are finding ourselves in an impossible situation.
I am also concerned about the inevitable strain and decline in the level of personal social services that we are bound to see as a result of the cuts. As is indicated in the Government circular and in the commentary on the rate support grant order, the Government anticipated that residential accommodation will suffer—in other words, the provision made for that type of accommodation. However, the Government demand of local authorities that they limit the increase of unit costs in personal social services, find more efficient ways of delivering services and cut back on the less essential services.
We know what is meant by "less essential services"—telephones for the disabled and adaptations under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. At our surgeries we shall have to correspond with and meet local authorities to press them to introduce services that are provided for by Act of Parliament although the authorities will be prevented from implementing them because of the cost.
I stress the problem of the delivery of social services in rural areas and point to a basic fallacy that always emerges in these debates—namely, that social deprivation exists only in urban areas and stress areas in the inner cities. I shall quote from an excellent introductory paper that was prepared by the research officer of the Gwynedd County Council social services department. When writing about the surveys now taking place in Gwynedd he states that it is clear
"that social deprivation is a phenomenon not strictly confined to more urbanised environments."
He continues, in assessing the information that has come from the surveys undertaken in Gwynedd:
"there is evidence to suggest that sparsely populated areas present proportionately as many demands on social services as do more urban areas."
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What is true of the personal social services is true throughout the whole range of social services provided. If we consider the indicators of social deprivation in the National Health Service, in housing and in education and the incidence of low income and dependence on supplementary benefit, we find that in rural areas and mixed areas—those are the partly urbanised areas that are found in parts of South Wales, which are not like the cities but are urbanised in the Welsh sense—there is as great an incidence of social deprivation as in inner city areas. Perhaps it is not on the scale that we would find in inner London, but certainly it is present in depth. The extent of the deprivation is as great.
When considering social indicators it is important to try to use them to allocate resources. It is important that we do so sensitively and realise that we do not have large pockets of deprivation only in urban areas. There is equally serious and deep social deprivation in the rural areas.
I should like to know how it will be possible, faced with the escalating costs of petrol and travel, to cut the unit cost of the delivery of social services in rural areas. I do not see how it is possible. The paper talks about a reduction in the unit cost of services. What do the Government mean by reducing unit costs? In most of the rural areas of Wales—
Mr. Dafydd Wigley: Does my hon. Friend agree that in these circumstances it would be regrettable if the Secretary of State were to transfer resources from rural areas to inner city areas—that is what has been suggested recently—without being sensitive to the indicators to which my hon. Friend has referred?
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: The right hon. Gentleman has done it two years running.
Mr. Thomas: That is the basic issue that we have been highlighting. We are seeing negotiations and transfers taking place throughout England and Wales without sensitivity being shown to the problems of rural Wales.
I must say something about the transport supplementary grant, which has not been sufficiently discussed so far. It is of vital concern to large parts of Wales, because we have a very thin transport

827
service. We shall have very serious transport problems connected with the need to develop the road network. The Welsh Office has decided to give priority to the extension of the M4, and trunk roads are being directed accordingly. We are also told that some time in the next 10 to 20 years we shall need a North Wales trunk road, and moneys are being directed towards the dualling of the A55. If that is happening, it is very important that county finance for road building and the maintenance of the transport network ensures that the road network in the rural areas is adequate.
This is where the transport supplementary grant is so important when we talk about the structure of our transport system. In Gwynedd and Dyfed there have been severe problems over the bus services. There has been a massive reduction in the services, which causes problems for the elderly and those who have to travel to work by public transport.
In England and Wales there has been a reduction in the overall transport supplementary grant from £286 million in 1975–76 to £255 million. Can the Minister give us some of the figures for individual Welsh counties? I appreciate that the calculations are complicated. I have not yet obtained figures on the effect of distribution for the Welsh counties, but I can say that important areas such as Gwynedd and Dyfed, which have had serious problems with their bus network and maintaining the public transport system, should not have to suffer a further reduction.
We have seen redundancies because of the impact of the transport supplementary grant in Gwynedd. There has already been a reduction in the number employed by the county council's highways and transportation department. There will be further reductions in bus services and the numbers directly employed in maintaining the communications network if the transport supplementary grant is substantially reduced. We have received many representations from the National Bus Company and the branch which operates in Gwynedd and Clwyd that it becomes more and more nearly impossible to operate anything like an adequate transport system because the grant, as it is allocated to Gwynedd and Clwyd, is not sufficient to maintain the bus system.
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Many of us, particularly those who represent areas with national parks, believe that there is an argument for a bigger transfer of resources from the urban to the rural areas for national parks than for any other service. They are a recreational service that we in the rural areas provide—though perhaps not the kind of recreation to which the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) referred. Many of the additional burdens of rural areas are imposed because in the summer the areas must cater for a population five or six times the normal size. I am well aware that the salaries of officers of local authorities in such areas are decided according to a notional summer population. I should like other matters to be decided on the same basis.
I turn next to the rôle of the Welsh Office in the rate support grant negotiations. I do not believe everything I read in the Western Mail, but I should like to quote the following report from the edition of 23rd November:
"Yesterday a Welsh Office Press officer attend a Press briefing given by the Department of the Environment in London to find out what next year's rate support grant level would be."
I do not accept that story in its entirety.
Will the Under-Secretary of State tell us what rôle the Welsh Office plays at the various stages of the negotiations. I suspect that there are no direct negotiations between the Welsh counties and the Welsh Office but that the matter is settled by inter-departmental committees, and that perhaps at Cabinet level the Secretary of State is forced to acquiesce. Tonight, I suspect that the Under-Secretary of State is carrying the can for an England and Wales settlement not made in the interests of Welsh ratepayers on low incomes who will have to pay more next year.
Several Hon. Members rose——
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I understand that Mr. Speaker has mentioned that brevity would be appreciated. I still have eight hon. Members who wish to catch my eye between now and eleven o'clock.
10.36 p.m.
Mr. Graham Page: Having regard to what you have said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I will refrain from trespassing into the problems of Wales which the

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hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Thomas) has put before the House so ably.
Someone should have the enterprise to issue an old boy's tie for the rate support grant club. We have this reunion in this utterly frustrating debate every year. The orders are presented to us as fait accompli, and the best we can do is try to express public concern as we know it from our constituents. Public concern centres not on the services of local government but on the cost of them. That may be a measure of the success of local government. It functions pretty well and produces goods and services. But at what cost? That is what we are debating.
For the current year, the cost of the last rate support grant was £10,461 million; it is estimated that next year it will be £11,707 million. It is what that means in rate poundage and rates paid after the Government have made their grant that concerns the individual member of the public. He asks "What will that mean to me in the rate poundage fixed by the local authority? What do I pay?"
When the ratepayer sees the rate poundage and the rates rising relentlessly every year, he asks "Why don't they do something about it?"—"they" meaning the Government. Let us be frank. Under our present system of financial local government, despite the formulae which hon. Members have been talking about, the Government are practically impotent, both in law and in convention, to do anything at all about the amount of rates demanded by the local authority.
These orders do practically nothing to control the expenditure of local authorities and, therefore the rates to be collected and the rate poundage to be imposed by any particular local authority. To give a smaller percentage by way of rate support grant this year than last year really has little or no effect on the rate poundage of local authorities.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer was far too optimistic on 15th December when he said:
Local authority current expenditure is now more strictly influenced by the central Government through the recent reduction of the main rate support grant for England and Wales from 65½ per cent. to 61 per cent. in 1977–78 and the corresponding reduction for Scotland.—[Official Report, 15th December 1976; Vol. 922, c. 1527.]
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If the Chancellor really thinks that reducing the rate support grant percentage will have an effect on the rates charged he is far too optimistic. I remind the House of the basis on which the grant is decided. First and foremost, the relevant expenditure is decided. That is decided by haggling between civil servants and local government servants over a long period of weeks or even months. It is a pity that we have nothing whatever to do with that in this House before the order is presented to us here, but that is how it happens.
I should have thought that once that figure of the relevant expenditure is agreed, as it is this year—I would rather call it the necessary expenditure—at £11,717 million, that it what the local authorities will have to pay out. There is no question about whether they can cut that down. I should have thought that the haggling over it had got it down to that stage, so unless the duties of the local authorities are in some way cut down, there is little hope of cutting down the balance which has to be found by rates. What a local council does not receive by way of grant it is obliged to raise by rates or by drawing on its balance.
The figures for next year work out in this way. The relevant expenditure is increased by £1,256 million. This year the Government contributed, by the 65½ per cent. of the relevant expenditure, £6,852 million. Next year, according to the rate support grant that we are debating, they will contribute £7,147 million. It is true that that is an increase of £295 million, so that is a contribution by the Government towards the overall increase of £1,256 million.
That leaves the local authorities throughout the land to find £961 million out of rates or out of drawing on reserves. The Secretary of State has told us this evening that he expects them to draw on reserves £175 million. Therefore, as the law stands, there is no way out of their having to raise £786 million—nearly £800 million—out of rates. Compared with what they have raised out of rates this year—£3,609 million—it looks as though they will have to get about 22 per cent. more next year out of the ratepayer even after drawing on reserves.

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That is the average. The Secretary of State has talked about a 15 per cent. increase overall. I think that he is putting it far too low.
Of course, if we scrapped rates altogether and relied upon local income tax, that burden of the extra amount of rates would be spread much more evenly over those who have to pay. Instead of one-third of the public having to pay the sum—that is about the figure for the ratepayers—it would be spread over the taxpaying public. I shall refrain from arguing tonight that we should go straight to local income tax. However, what I must argue is that until we abandon the rating system it is intolerable that the increase in local government expenditure and the percentage decrease in the rate support grant should be borne entirely by the ratepayer. Some of this burden of a 22 per cent. increase in rates this year, as I work it out, must surely in future be raised out of other sources of revenue.
The Government ought to have looked at other sources of revenue before presenting the rate support grant to the House this year, because one of the easiest sources of local revenue is that out of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer last week pinched a 10 per cent. increase—alcohol and tobacco. Certainly a beer tax is the easiest tax to collect locally and one that is less noticeable, as the penny on the pint. The Chancellor told us that his 10 per cent. increase in alcohol and tobacco tax would produce £280 million.
One of such sources of further revenue which really should have been used by the Government before presenting this order was approved by Parliament nearly 17 months ago. Nearly 17 months ago the Lotteries Bill received the Royal Assent. It is absolutely scandalous that the Government have delayed bringing the Act into operation and prevented local authorities from obtaining the benefits which could be gained from the proceeds of lotteries. I am aware that Layfield classed local authority lotteries as low-yielding revenue sources. That may be right, as the law stands. But with the Lotteries Act the amount which could be gained from lotteries could be increased by a stroke of the pen. The Secretary of State has only to make an order to that effect.
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Again, to quote Layfield, local lotteries would
"arouse some local interest in council affairs".
The proceeds could provide those services in areas, such as amenities, sport, culture and so on, the cutting of which incenses the local people. It is a scandal that the Government have failed to bring that Act into operation over a period of 17 months. The Government ought to be considering other sources of revenue. They have been discussed so many times. There are, for example, a local sales tax, motor vehicle licence fees and motor vehicle fuel duties. All these are possible candidates to help prevent the continual increase in rate poundage and the amount of rates which can be collected.
I know that Layfield brushed those suggestions aside. But until local authorities are permitted to look to sources other than the taxpayer for their revenue the Government are powerless to control in any way the burden of rates, voluntarily or compulsorily. If there were such other sources of revenue this order could have been accompanied by something which would have been extremely popular with the public—an agreement to freeze rates at last year's figure. We could say to the local authorities "Here are other sources of revenue. If you want to spend more, look to them for the extra money." At present this order says to local authorities "We know that you will have to spend £11,717 million next year. We know that this is £1,256 million above last year's figure. We know that we are contributing only £295 million towards that increase, but you will not get the balance in any other way than from the ratepayers or by drawing on your reserves". This is becoming an impossible situation.
10.48 p.m.
Mr. Dudley Smith: One of the disadvantages in being almost the last Back Bencher to be called in a debate is that most of the runs have already been made—some at inordinate length. I will try to be brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I know that some of my hon. Friends still hope to catch your eye.
Perhaps the best policy in these circumstances is to hit out. Underlying

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every speech we have heard on this subject has been the paramount need for rating reform. The more we go down the road the more evident it becomes to reasonable and sensible people that the system has to be changed because of its great unfairnesses and because, at a time of rampant inflation, it becomes more and more discriminatory.
I was delighted that in his strong speech my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) reaffirmed the pledge of the Conservative Party to reform the rating system after the next General Election. If we had won the last General Election such a reform would be well under way. We know that we cannot rely on the Labour Party. It will never change the rating system because it likes to perpetuate some of the unfairnesses in it.
I do not want to mince words about this legislation. It is a vicious piece of political discrimination against certain areas, which are regarded by the Government as Tory areas, in favour of those areas which are Socialist. I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) that some element in all this is due to the fact that the county council elections are due. It is all part and parcel of the grand design against middle-income people who are being oppressed so strongly by the Government.
This is another move in that direction. It is not a lost issue, because many are begining to rumble what is happening. My county of Warwickshire is by no means a rich country, or a county flowing over with rich people. When one bears in mind the effects of these proposals on Warwickshire, one realises how bad an order it is. As a result of local government reorganisation, Warwickshire is one of the smallect counties in the country. Under these proposals we shall face a rate increase of about 25 per cent. The alternatives are severe cuts or a substantial rate increase.
I asked the chief executive of the county council what he felt about the situation. He is a sober realistic judge, and non-political. He said that the cuts would be disastrous to the county. If Warwickshire was able to hold the rate to 15 per cent., it would mean that about 200 whole-time jobs and 1,300 part-time
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jobs would go. It would also mean that buildings would be left uncleaned and residential establishments closed, and still further maintenance cuts—a long list which underlines how at present many of the standards in Warwickshire are below the national average because of the incidence of the penalties that flow from the rate burdens of the past.
Under the present proposals Warwickshire will receive £8½ million less than it would have received if grant arrangements had remained unchanged. In those circumstances it is impossible for the county to do its job properly. The county is aware why this has happened. It has been penalised because the Secretary of State refuses to discriminate between good and bad authorities. This point has been put to the right hon. Gentleman time and time again, but all he says is that it is something to do with computers. I do not know a great deal about computers, but I know that they produce only what they are programmed to produce. I believe that in this instance the computer was programmed to produce the result the Government wanted.
The Government need not think that they will get away with this. The so-called shire counties will not just bear this burden. I think the Government underestimate what is felt by many members of the public. The Government think that people will grin and bear it, but they must realise that in rating terms people are getting near breaking point. There will be rebellions against the system in due course if we go on with the same ideas.
We have reached the stage of gerrymandering over rate support grant. If I can obtain support, I shall certainly divide the Houe against the order as a gesture of protest.
10.53 p.m.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I shall be brief, in order to allow at least one further colleague an opportunity to take part in the debate.
I am delighted to be called to speak following the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Smith) because he represents a constituency in Warwickshire, a county which I served for six years as a councillor. It is an efficient county and a county that has carried out Government

835
requests by pruning expenditure, and dipping into balances to keep down rates, in the last two or three years. My own county of Cheshire—which is not to suffer quite as much as Warwickshire—has in recent years pruned its expenditure to the very bone. It has also dipped into its balances in heeding the Government's request and to keep the burden to the ratepayers as low as possible.
Various local government associations have said some unkind things about this rate support grant settlement. The Association of District Councils described it as
"a severe body blow to local authorities".
The Association of County Councils described the settlement as "grossly inequitable". Even the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, whose members come out of the situation best, describe it as "a very tough settlement". It is clear that it is a very tough settlement. I endorse the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington that it is biased against the shire areas, which predominantly, but not exclusively, are represented by Conservative authorities and Conservative Members of Parliament.
The Secretary of State must realise that some of the rural areas do not have all the facilities which urban areas possess, whether it be in the form of libraries, sporting facilities, recreation grounds, footpaths, street lighting, kerbing or regular patrols by police. That is an advantage which rural areas and shire counties do not have. Therefore, we would expect the rates to be lower, not higher, but this is not the case.
The cost which people living in rural areas incur in getting to their employment has dramatically increased.
Mr. Shepherd: Hear, hear.
Mr. Winterton: Many of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Shepherd), who says "Hear, hear", must travel many miles to work. The cost of owning, maintaining and licensing a car has dramatically increased in recent years.
The Government, who certainly have a problem of urban deprivation to deal with, will stand indicted of producing
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rural destruction and rural deprivation in addition to the problems which they already face. There are rural areas, market towns and areas such as that represented by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mr. Forrester), which is not an urban area but is in a shire county where great deprivation has, for reasons of industrial and commercial change, occurred in recent years. I support the speech of the hon. Gentleman, which was a breath of fresh air from the Benches opposite.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North mentioned briefly concessionary fares. I hope that I shall be permitted for about 20 seconds to raise that matter. If concessionary fares are to be available, they must be available to all old people, whether they live on bus routes or on public service routes or not. I have a parish council, the Henbury Parish Council, near Macclesfield, which is campaigning to get the Department of the Environment to allow the concessionary tokens issued to old-age pensioners who apply for them to be used for taxi fares. I must acknowledge that if this were taken up on a wide scale it could well increase public expenditure, but at this moment local authorities are not permitted to grant this right to the people who cannot use public transport. I hope that the Department will be very sensitive and receptive to this campaign.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Kenneth Marks): Concessionary fares are given entirely at the discretion of the local authority. They have nothing to do with the rate support grant or with any other grant. If there are no concessionary fares in an area, it is because the local council has decided not to grant them.
Mr. Winterton: The Minister has misunderstood. There are concessionary fares in my area, but the local authority is not permitted to allow the tokens to be used by old-age pensioners as part-payment for taxi fares to get them from where they live, which is not where public service vehicles operate, into the town to do their shopping or whatever they have to do. Therefore, I hope that the Secretary of State will be very sympathetic to this campaign.
In my area, the county council, on account of the burdens and restrictions

837
being placed on it, is being forced to close in the near future the Mount old people's home in the town in which I live, Congleton, in Cheshire, because it can no longer maintain it. I hope that a campaign will be mounted to persuade the Cheshire County Council to change its mind. But if this sort of action has to take place, if this is the sort of decision which county councils must take because of the discrimination which is shown against them in the rate support grant, it is a very sad and serious situation.
I wish to refer to the question of voluntary organisations whose grants from local authorities are being drastically reduced by the local authorities because they no longer have the money to make grants. This is a tragedy, because I am sure that the Secretary of State will agree that such organisations provide very good value for money, in fact, cost-wise they are probably better value than the maintained bodies. If this Government remain in office until the next rate support grant negotiations, and I have grave doubts about that, I hope that they will be more sensitive and understanding towards the problems of the shire counties, which have problems just as great as those of the urban areas.
11.0 p.m.
Mr. Nicholas Edwards: My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) spoke for many hon. Members, I am sure, when they expressed dissatisfaction with the way in which, over many years, we have had to deal with this enormously important and complex matter. I fear that it will not be until the House of Commons takes its courage in its hands one year and actually throws out one of these orders instead of engaging in the usual ritual dance that we shall force a reconsideration of the way in which these matters are handled.
The Opposition do not deny that savings have to be made, but we are entitled to ask for three responses from the Government. First, the Government should be absolutely honest in their approach. Second, they should not expect local authorities to do what they themselves are not prepared to do. Third, the burdens should be applied equitably.
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The truth is that the Government have failed on all three counts.
The Government are being less than honest because they are seeking to obscure the reality of what they are doing. For example, they have been playing with words about cash limits. Last year, they promised that the cash limits would be reviewed if the pace of inflation generally or the rate of cost increases affecting local authorities' expenditure was substantially higher than allowed for in the cash limits. The implication of that statement was clear—"Here are cuts of so much, but if we, the Government, fail in our job of reducing inflation, we shall not clobber you still more." Yet that is precisely what they then proceeded to do.
The Secretary of State talked about balances in justification of his decision, but many local authorities do not have those balances. The truth is that the Government have passed the buck to the local authorities for the whole of the additional cost which has arisen because they themselves have not met their own inflation targets.
Second, the Government should not ask the local authorities to do what they themselves are not prepared to do. It seems to me that they are seeking to cut local government expenditure more severely than they are prepared to cut their own. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Shadow Chancellor pointed out yesterday, the Government talk of making reductions of about 8,000 in the Government Civil Service as a consequence of their latest round of expenditure cuts, while on the Secretary of State's own estimate today they are looking for reductions in local authority staffs of 20,000 to 30,000, and many think that that figure will be exceeded. The local authorities should be given a better example by the Government and their agencies.
I give just one example. A letter received from a member of the West Sussex County Council draws attention in eloquent terms to the string of advertisements which have appeared offering highly paid posts with the Land Authority for Wales. This West Sussex counciilor points out that the English local authorities have been told by the Government that they should operate the Community Land Act with very few, if any, additional staff, and he speaks of a

839
recent survey which shows that only one county council in England has appointed additional staff for this purpose. If those advertisements have had any success, there must be a considerable number of staff now gathering in Wales.
Mr. D. E. Thomas rose—
Mr. Edwards: No, I shall not give way. We have limited time, and I have curtailed what I have to say in order to give other hon. Members a chance to speak. Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Wales will tell us how many are currently employed by the Land Authority for Wales, at what cost, how much land they have acquired, and at what price.
The central point of the debate has been that distribution must be equitable. Speaker after speaker has indicated just how unfairly and uneven distribution has been, starting with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North. The complaint was also made, in the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), that the Government seem to be helping the sinners at the expense of the saints.
In the Government's initial set of figures there are enormous and unexplained discrepancies. Further calculations on the loss of the needs element for individual non-metropolitan counties indicate even wilder swings in the figures than appear in the original table. Last year, the Secretary of State spoke about protecting remote rural areas. That statement looks pretty sick against the background of the increases that have been described in tonight's debate. Not for the first time, a Labour Government have decided to clobber the countryside. It is hardly surprising that some of my hon. Friends have questioned the Government's real motives for concentrating resources on areas that are necessary to them for their political survival.
No explanation has been given for some of the more extraordinary discrepancies. Residents in Dudley will be keenly interested to know why they will suffer the largest increases in rates, of 11 per cent. above the average, while Wolverhampton will have increases of 10 per cent. below average. We who live in Cornwall do not envy the good fortune those in Dyfed who, we thought, had
840
problems and needs comparable to those of Cornwall. We are distinctly puzzled why that council should be as far on the right side of the national average as we are on the wrong side. It is hard to believe that the reasons are fairness, social justice and political principle—unless that principle is defined in purely party political terms.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) pointed out that rural areas are not immune to social pressures. He said that rates are the wrong instrument for redistribution. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire spoke about the problems of a rising population for which this system caters inadequately. The Secretary of State, in an extraordinary intervention, disclaimed responsibility for the arbitrary nature of these arrangements by blaming it on his computer. That is the level to which Ministers' excuses have sunk.
As to the Welsh position, the hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Thomas) pointed out that, on the basis of the Government's own figures, Wales has done badly. Every county there is on the wrong side of the national average. It is true that Wales maintains its previous share of the needs element, but I should hope so, because a number of Welsh counties—and Mid-Glamorgan is an obvious example—have more in common with the metropolitan districts than with the shires. In terms of social need and stress, problems are as severe in some Welsh counties as in some metropolitan districts.
The rural areas have fared particularly badly. Dyfed and Gwynedd suffer from low incomes, poverty and high unemployment. In my constituency, for example, the unemployment rate is the highest in the United Kingdom. They also suffer from sparsity of population and have to cater for an annual influx of tourists for which sufficient allowance is not made in the present formula. Yet these counties are among the worst sufferers under the system of distribution that the Government have imposed.
One thing that we do not yet know is the Welsh share of the transport supplementary grant of £255 million. I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to tell us tonight that the percentage will

841
not be less than that of last year. The Secretary of State has pointed out that the Welsh domestic ratepayer is helped by a higher rate of relief and that his actual cash increase may, therefore, be rather less severe than the percentage figures indicate. But those higher rates of relief are given for good reasons, among them the higher water charges suffered in Wales.
Mr. Shepherd: Does my hon. Friend recollect that Herefordshire comes under the Welsh Water Authority but does not benefit by that extra support grant?
Mr. Edwards: I agree that Herefordshire did badly in that respect. That was the prime reason for which the grant was given, and it is as valid this year as it was originally. The proportionate aid given to the Welsh domestic ratepayers has fallen each year because the actual cash assistance has been maintained. The domestic rate relief offers no consolation to the small businesses of the area.
My impression is that the Welsh settlement is a good deal worse than the Secretary of State tried to make out. Welsh industrial regions have missed out on the switch of resources obtained by their English counterparts, and the rural areas have been particularly hard hit.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Sir J. Hall) had some wise words to say on the subject of small businesses. It is impossible to over-emphasise the importance of small businesses to the economy, particularly in rural areas. Over much of the country they are the main providers of jobs, and their decline is the principal cause of the present unemployment levels. To many, this further imposition of rates will come as the final straw, and they will go out of business.
I wonder whether, in calculating the unemployment effects of their proposals, the Government have taken into account the impact of the rate burden. The Secretary of State referred only to direct job losses within the local authorities. I am bound to be critical of the Governmen when they continue housing subsidies indiscriminately to those with incomes of £100 a week and more, rely more on direct than on indirect taxation and add to the rate burden of small businesses at a time when they are uniquely depressed.
842
Last year my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed) said that the next to be hit would be rural transport, the old, the disabled, the handicapped and, of course, education. He was right. Those are the sectors that have taken the biggest hammering.
Nothing is more pressing than the paragraph in the report on the orders that refers to personal social services. This was referred to by the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) and my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury. I know that if he had been called it was the matter to which my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) particularly wished to draw the attention of the House. Is it necessary that it should be so? Cuts have to be made, and they are bound to be painful. People will either have to pay or go without things they have come to expect, but I am not clear why education and the social services are cut before rent subsidies.
The central question that has emerged from the debate is whether the Secretary of State has distributed the resources and the burdens fairly. In my judgment, the distribution has been grossly inequitable. Cuts in services can be acceptable only if justice is seen to be done. Nothing that the Secretary of State said this afternoon and nothing that has been said by Govenrment supporters dissuades me from the belief that a primary factor has been the electoral fortunes of the Labour Party.
11.14 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Alec Jones): In opening the debate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment said that he had tried to produce a rate support grant settlement for 1977–78 which would be both fair to local authorities and ratepayers and right for the difficult economic conditions of our times.
I suppose that it is true that everyone taking part in the debate has tended to accept those as valid objectives, but many hon. Members have cast considerable doubt on whether my right hon. Friend has achieved them. I suspect that it was ever thus.
Reading through a few rate support grant debates over recent years, having taken part in some from both sides of the House, I find a great similarity

843
between the kind of complaints made then and today. It was clear tonight that, representing the many different areas of the country, we have understandably tended to view the settlement as it affects our own constituencies. A precis of the debate would be the shires versus the inner cities or even the shires versus London.
Similarly, we have all expressed our special interests and sought to leave our favourite services, our priority services, completely untouched. I believe that having endorsed the Government's economic strategy yesterday, the House will at least concede that my right hon. Friend has sought, with some success, to meet his objectives.
My right hon. Friend paid tribute to the work of the local authorities and local authority associations over past years. In that he was joined by the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Jones), who reminded us of the good work of the local authorities. The hon. Gentleman said that local authorities were better at keeping more accurate figures of estimates than the Government. I do not essentially disagree. However, taking the figures given by the hon. Gentleman, I suggest that he is at fault as the average rate payment in his constituency is £91, not £175.
Mr. Arthur Jones: I think that the Minister may be taking the figure for the country as a whole, not my constituency.
Mr. Alec Jones: I do not propose to make a great issue of this matter. If I am wrong I shall write and apologise to the hon. Gentleman, as I am sure he will do the same to me.
I should like to join my right hon. Friend in thanking the local authorities, especially Welsh local authorities and their associations, for what they have accomplished in the past year.
I fully appreciate the difficulties which keeping expenditure within the limits imposed present to local authorities. This year Welsh local authorities have made commendable efforts and have succeeded in cutting their original expenditure plans by about 1·7 per cent. Next year's requirement is for authorities in Wales, as
844
in England, to reduce expenditure by 1·6 per cent. on this year's estimated out-turn figures. Services will inevitably need to be trimmed, and this will involve a rundown in staff numbers, which, as my right hon. Friend explained, can in the main be dealt with through natural wastage.
I think that the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) was somewhat unfair when he suggested that my right hon. Friend had ducked that issue. My right hon. Friend clearly indicated that in particular areas there may have to be some redundancies, and he went on to spell out in detail how they could be taken up by natural wastage. My right hon. Friend did not seek to pretend that he was giving an absolute guarantee that there would not be any redundancies anywhere.
The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Edwards) kept up his perpetual harping about Wales being dealt with unfairly. In percentage terms the average increase in domestic rates in Wales is likely to be some points higher than in England—Wales approximately 19 per cent.; England 15 per cent. But I do not think that people in my constituency—Rhondda—or in Pembroke spend percentages. Because of the lower rateable values in Wales, the average increase in the actual rate bills is likely to be lower. The 15 per cent. increase in average rate bills in England will add £15 to the year's average domestic rate bill. The 19 per cent. increase in Wales will add only about £11 to the year's average rate bill.
One reason for the higher percentage increase in Wales is the gearing effect of the domestic element which subsidises the domestic ratepayer. Welsh domestic ratepayers currently receive 36p in the pound compared with 18·5p in the pound in England and, despite difficulties and the tough nature of the settlement, these levels are to be retained for 1977–78.
Another contributing factor to the high percentage increases in Wales is the reduction in the standard rateable value on the basis of which the resources element is calculated. Although, generally speaking, the effect of the formula for distributing the needs element is to favour the metropolitan areas, the share of the Welsh shire counties as a whole will not

845
be changed significantly from this year's level of 5·8 per cent. The actual figures are 5·815 per cent. reducing to 5·807 per cent. It is a reduction, but a very small one, of 0·008 per cent., amounting to about £300,000. Within that, the share of some counties will increase and that of others will decrease. Four counties will gain by the settlement and four will lose by it. The initial distribtion of the needs element to Welsh authorities for this year totals £207 million. For next year it will be about £215 million.
I must tell the hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Thomas) that the RSG system is currently operated on an English and Welsh system. It is one system, and Welsh Office officials and Ministers played a full part in all the decisions in arriving at this settlement. But it is not possible under the system to distribute grant between authorities in Wales other than according to the principles which apply to the distribution generally. However, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that we have already set up a working party to report on how a separate Welsh RSG system can be operated when the Welsh Assembly comes into being.
Many hon. Members said a great deal about the Government's decision to use the regression-based formula. The choice was either this or the no-change formula. I accept that the no-change formula was advocated by a number of local authorities and some of the associations. But if we had accepted no change, it would have meant abandoning any attempt to recognise that there are differences in local authority expenditure needs and that some of those needs are increasing in some areas faster than in others. If we had done as some hon. Members suggested and left the shires as they were, it would have meant ignoring and forgetting the problems of the inner cities.
We believe that there are two reasons why were right to accept the regression-based formula, as difficult as the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) may find it. I sympathise with him in his difficulty. One reason is that, despite any defects, it is still considered the most objective method currently available for assesing differences between the expenditure needs of local authorities. The other reason is that this formula recognises that areas whose needs are found to be greatest, notably the inner urban
846
areas, should have those needs supported by grant distribution.
One of the major changes that we have carried out this year is to include the new factor of unemployment. The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) got himself into a great tangle about whether the use of unemployment was justified. He seemed to be suggesting that we might have left it out. If we had left it out, we would have made the distribution far less sensitive to the needs of certain areas. The evidence is that there is a direct relationship between the level of local authority expenditure and the level of unemployment in any given area, and it is because the evidence showed conclusively that there was that relationship that the unemployment factor was included in the formula.
Mr. Heseltine: I was not trying to suggest that it should not be taken into account. I was only making the point that it was under Labour Governments that there were such levels of unemployment.
Mr. Jones: That simply is not true. I have been in this House for 10 years, for a great deal of that time under Conservative Governments. During those periods, unemployment levels in my constituency were particularly high, and never once did a Conservative Government consider including unemployment in any rate support grant settlement.
I have listened with sympathy to the complaints that the local authorities hardest hit will be those with no balances to act as a cushion against high rate increases and/or where expenditure has been restricted within the Government's guidelines. On balance it must be said that ratepayers in the areas of local authorities with low balances will have been spared from the over-rating that is sometimes used to build up these balances. The money has to be found somewhere, but the decision must rest with the local authority.
As to the allegation that individual authorities are being penalised by keeping to the Government's guidelines, let me clear up one or two misconceptions. The present basis of needs assessment relies in part on past expenditure to determine the entitlement. It also relies on nearly 40 needs indicators which are completely unaffected by expenditure patterns. It is only if a significant number of authorities

847
rities with the same characteristics are excessive spenders that more grant will go to them. There is no evidence of such a group.
The shire counties as a whole are increasing their expenditure in 1976–77 at a faster rate than the metropolitan districts. The behaviour of an individual local authority should, therefore, make no difference at all to its own needs assessment, which is determined by the data for all the indicators. For instance, the more old people living in the authority area, the greater the grant paid.
I listened with little sympathy to Opposition Members who, in spite of the best efforts of my right hon. Friend, persisted in making what at best were innuendoes and at worst were accusations that the distribution of the package was motivated by political chicanery. It was based on the belief that we should channel more money into the inner cities. Many Conservative Members expressed sympathy for that idea, but when it came to putting their money where their sympathy lay they were reluctant to oblige.
I do not represent an inner city, but in the course of my travels to London, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, and so on I have been satisfied that many of these areas have special needs which do not exist even in many of our problem areas in Wales.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: What are they?
Mr. Jones: If the hon. Gentleman believes that there are no additional difficulties
in London he can borrow my spectacles and go and have a look. I cannot give way any more; I only have a few minutes left to me—there is an appropriate Welsh phrase "Chwarae teg"—be fair.
If hon. Gentlemen suspect political motivation, let them look at the famous list and consider the effect that the settlement is likely to have on the county of Cornwall. I do not think that Cornwall considers itself a Labour stronghold. We are accused of political chicanery. But we have used a method which was introduced by the Conservatives and was enshrined in a Tory Act. Our approach was based on the 1974 Tory policy which required a more effective recognition of the needs of the inner cities. The Tories are now saying that this policy and this legislation should be abandoned.
I can assure my hon. Friends that the Water Charges Equalisation Bill has nothing to do with the rate support grant. That Bill does not propose to give domestic water consumers in Wales a financial advantage over consumers in England.
No one can disguise the fact that this has been a tough settlement. We believe that it had to be tough to reflect the Government's determination to get Government expenditure, local as well as central, under control.
It being half-past Eleven o'clock MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question pursuant to Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted Business):—
The House divided: Ayes 90, Noes 15.

Division No.25.]

AYES

[11.30 p.m.

Archer, Peter

Cryer, Bob

Kerr, Russell

Armstrong, Ernest

Cunningham, G. (lslington S)

Lamble, David

Ashton, Joe

Dalyell, Tam

Leadbitter, Ted

Atkinson, Norman

Deakins, Eric

Litterick, Tom

Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

de Freitas, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Lyons, Edward (Bradford W)

Bates, Alf

Dormand, J.D.

McElhone, Frank

Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood

Duffy, A.E.P.

MacFarquhar, Roderick

Bishop, E.S.

Eadie, Alex

MacKenzie, Gregor

Blenkinsop, Arthur

Ewing, Harry (Stirling)

Magee, Bryan

Booth, Rt Hon Albert

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Marks, Kenneth

Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

Forrester, John

Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

Brown, Robert C.(Newcastle W)

Fowler, Gerald (The Wrekin)

Mendelson, John

Brown, Ronald (Hackney S)

Freeson, Reginald

Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

Buchan, Norman

Golding, John

Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

Buchanan, Richard

Gourlay, Harry

Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

Campbell, lan

Grant, George (Morpeth)

Moyle, Roland

Canavan, Dennis

Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

Mulley, Rt Hon Frederlck

Carmichael, Neil

Harper, Joseph

Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King

Cocks, Rt Hon Michael

Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Cohen, Stanley

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Palmer, Arthur

Coleman, Donald

Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)

Roper, John

Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)

John, Brynmor

Ross, Rt Hon W. (KilmarnocK)

Cowans, Harry

Jones, Alec (Rhondda)

Rowlands, Ted

Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

Judd, Frank

Shore, Rt Hon Peter

Craigen, Jim (Maryhill)

Kaufman, Gerald

Silkin, Rt Hon S.C. (Dulwich)

Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)

Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)

Woodall, Alec

Stallard, A.W.

Ward, Michael

Wool, Robert

Stoddart, David

White, James (Pollok)

Strang, Gavin

Whitlock, William

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Tinn, James

Williams, Alan (Swansea W)

Mr. Peter Snape and

Tomlinson, John

Wilson, Rt Hon Sir Harold (Huyton)

Mr. Ted Graham.

Urwin, T.W.

NOES

Beith, A.J.

Raison, Timothy

Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

Brotherton, Michael

Rees, Peter (Dover & Deal)

Winterton, Nicholas

Hannam, John

Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

James, R. Rhodes (Cambridge)

Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

Sproat, lain

Mr. Dudley Smith and

Jopling, Michael

Steel, David (Roxburgh)

Mr. Colin Shepherd.

Newton, Tony

Question accordingly agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Rate Support Grant Order 1976, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.
Resolved,
That the Rate Support Grant (Increase) Order 1976, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.—[Mr. Shore.]
Resolved,
That the Rate Support Grant (Increase) (No. 2) Order 1976, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.—[Mr. Shore.]

RATE SUPPORT GRANT (SCOTLAND)
11.40 p.m.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Bruce Millan): I beg to move,
That the Rate Support Grant (Scotland) Order 1976, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine): The amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) and a number of his hon. Friends is not selected.
Mr. Milian: The order is described in great detail in the report laid with it, and, therefore, I shall not go over it in great detail, particularly as we have only a limited time for our debate.
The basic purpose of the order may be summarised as being to authorise rate support grants of £882·8 million to local authorities in Scotland in 1977–78 and to make additional grants of £52·6 million and £6·38 million for increased costs affecting expenditure in 1976–77 and 1975–76 respectively. The rate support grants constitute the largest single source of local authority income, and, therefore, I need not emphasise the importance of the order.
850
The order is being laid against a general economic background which is familiar to the House, and I need not elaborate on it. That background has been explained very thoroughly to the local authorities in Scotland on a number of occasions. For example, the February 1976 White Paper on public expenditure stated that the substantial rate of expansion in recent years in local authority manpower and in local spending could not continue, and that any increases in individual services had to be offset by reduced levels of provision in other services.
This was by no means the first intimation to Scottish local authorities of the need for restraint. In November 1974 the new authorities were asked, in preparing their budgets for 1975–76, to have regard to the very difficult economic circumstances which would prevail, and to avoid new commitments which would result in extra expenditure in 1975–76. Authorities were also asked to ensure that any increases in staff complements on reorganisation were justifiable. Subsequent circulars reinforced this advice, confirming that the restraint required in 1975–76 would have to be continued in subsequent years. The rate support grant settlement for 1976–77 was, therefore, related to a level of relevant expenditure lower than authorities would have wished, but nevertheless a higher level of expenditure—and indeed a larger grant—than in previous years. At that time local authorities were asked to regard the 1976–77 relevant expenditure figure as a ceiling on the assumption that in future years it would be reduced, and to avoid any staff increases.
I give that rehearsal of events because I want to make it absolutely clear that there can be no question of the order for 1977–78 coming as a great surprise to local authorities. They were given every

851
indication that for the next year we would be producing an order which was justified in terms of the February 1976 White Paper. Before that, other warnings had already been given.
It might be worth while if I were to tell the House something about the way in which local authority expenditure in Scotland has increased in real terms in recent years. The increase in the gross domestic product between 1971–72 and 1975–76 on a Great Britain basis was only 6 per cent. But the total public expenditure in Scotland in those four years increased by 20 per cent. and the local authority expenditure relevant for rate support grant increased by 31 per cent. in real terms. The gross domestic product rose by 6 per cent. and local authority expenditure by 31 per cent. in real terms in those four years. Even in an economic situation less stringent than at present, it would not have been possible to allow such a rate of increase in expenditure to continue. It is unrealistic to expect it to do so, given the growth we have had in these years in the gross domestic product.
Mr. Donald Stewart: Is not there a moral or ethical as well as a financial problem here? Many of the functions of local authorities have been legislated on to them by the Government. If the finance has been withdrawn, how can the Government expect them to keep those functions going?
Mr. Milian: I will come to that point, although it is not particularly relevant to the argument I am using now, which is that there has been a very considerable increase over the period in real expenditure by local authorities.
The relevant expenditure that was used as the basis of the rate support grant for the year 1976–77 was not agreed by the local authorities, but they were asked to budget within the figures on which the grant that year was based. I am sorry to say that they budgeted for £47 million in the current year more than the relevant grant figure.
I explained in the most explicit terms to the local authorities, at a meeting with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities in July this year, that if they were not able to get their current year's
852
expenditure below the budgeted figure and somewhere nearer the figure on which the grant had been based, they were likely to face considerable problems of reduction of expenditure in 1977–78. I am sorry that, despite that plea—and I am not laying the blame on any particular authority—I got a very small response indeed—only possible savings of £2 million in the current year. I believe that the actual savings will, however, be more than that. Even at this late stage, I want to say that the more the local authorities are able to get their current year's expenditure down within the guideline figure, the less difficult it will be for them to deal with the position in 1977–78.
I turn now to the relevant expenditure which has been fixed for 1977–78. The main point is that in real terms it is higher than the relevant expenditure fixed for 1976–77, on which the current year's rate support grant was based. There is a lot of misunderstanding about this. I have seen comments suggesting that the basis of the grant for 1977–78 is a level of expenditure less than that which was the basis for 1976–77. That is not so. Far from cutting the figure in the 1976 White Paper for 1977–78—I am again referring to expenditure in real terms, taking into account adjustments in the value of money—I have increased the base figure for 1977–78 by switches from other parts of the expenditure programme, including capital expenditure programmes, by about £29 million. Therefore, while it was true that in the White Paper it was expected that the base level for 1977–78 would be rather less than that for 1976–77, it is, in terms of the order that we are debating, slightly more. It is £6 million more than the figure for 1976–77, and then it is revalued to bring it up to current prices. That means that the base figure, with loan charges added, is very considerably higher than the base figure for 1976–77.
The other thing that I want to say at this stage about the relevant expenditure on which this order for 1977–78 is based is that I am asking local authorities to keep within guidelines which are related to that relevant expenditure. I am not asking local authorities to cut below that figure. Therefore, I am not asking local authorities, for 1977–78 taken as a whole, to cut their expenditure for that

853
year below the figure on which the 1976–77 rate support grant settlement was based. It is admittedly below the figure for which they budgeted for the current year, but that is because they budgeted for the current year beyond the figures included in the grant for the current year.
I turn to the question of the rate of grant. The rate of grant has been decreased in the current year by 4 per cent. However, at 68½ per cent. it is still, by any kind of historical standards, a very high rate of grant indeed. It is the highest level of grant that we have ever had except in 1975–76 and 1976–77. In the last year for which the previous Conservative Government were responsible, the rate of grant was 68 per cent., and that was on a different expenditure base. There have been certain adjustments in expenditure since then.
If we were comparing like with like, a 68½ per cent. grant for 1977–78 is actually 2 per cent. higher than that of the last year of the previous Conservative Government, 1974–75. Therefore, I do not want to listen to a whole lot of lectures from the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) or any other hon. Member about an allegedly unprecedentedly low level of grant, because it is higher than it has ever been in any year of Tory Government and higher than it was in 1974–75.
In 1975–76 and 1976–77, under the present Labour Government, we very considerably increased the level of rate support grant percentage. To some extent that was to take care of particular problems arising from local government reorganisation and from high levels of inflation. However, the figure at 68½ per cent. is still, by any historical standards, very high indeed.
Again, contrary to popular belief, the average domestic rate burden as a percentage of earnings has been going down over the last few years. The ordinary domestic ratepayer is under the misapprehension that he is paying as a percentage of his earnings more and more every year in rates. It is just not so. Taking rate payments as a percentage of average weekly manual worker earnings in Scotland in 1971–72 the figure was 4 per cent. In 1976–77, the current year, it is down to 3·2 per cent. Therefore, it is not true that we are putting a greater
854
and greater burden on the domestic ratepayer. In recent years, under the present Government, the figure has come down very substantially. I hope that some of those points will enable the House to get these matters into some kind of perspective.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is not being selective in using figures. Does he recall giving me an answer last month in which he said that the burden of rates per head of population in Scotland in 1972–73 compared with 1976–77 had gone up from £42 to £86? Is he saying that the net wages of manual workers have more than doubled in the past four years?
Mr. Millan: Yes. I am saying that as a percentage of weekly manual earnings the rate burden has gone down. I have given the figures from 1971–72. I can give all the figures over the years, and the percentages. In other words, wages have gone up more rapidly than rate increases. I have the figures for England, too.
I also make the point that the domestic rate burden in Scotland has in recent years been slightly less than it is in England and Wales. Again, there is no justification for the claim that Scotland is in some way suffering when compared with England. If the local authorities stay within the expenditure guidelines for 1977–78—which, I repeat, in real terms are slightly up on 1976–77 and not a reduction as many seem to believe—the average increase in rates will he about 15 per cent. This is not simply a Scottish Office figure. It is one which is agreed by COSLA and was included in the document COSLA distributed to all hon Members about a week ago.
I agree that there will be some areas, and Strathclyde is one, where even when they keep within the guidelines, the increase, for particular reasons relating to those areas, will be considerably higher than 15 per cent. I have been over the figures for Strathclyde, and I accept that it is making every effort to keep to the guidelines. I applaud it for that. Even so, it will have a bigger increase. It is also true, therefore, that there will be other parts of Scotland where local authorities, keeping within the guidelines, will be able to have rate

855
increases which are less than 15 per cent. The figure I have quoted is one which applies on average over the whole of Scotland, and it is not a Scottish Office figure. It is a figure agreed with COSLA. It is also a figure which compares with the figure quoted for England, and it is one which takes account of the fact that we in Scotland do not have balances to be carried forward to cushion rate increases in 1977–78.
In comparing Scotland with England it has to be remembered that so far as there are balances in England they have not been contributed by the Government but by the English ratepayers who paid more in rates than the local authorities spent. The reduction in 1977–78 of the Scottish grant is by 4 per cent., while the English figure is 4½ per cent. The rate support grant in England and Wales for 1977–78 will be 61 per cent., compared with 68½ per cent. in Scotland. I make these points because it has been alleged that in some way Scotland is being treated in a worse fashion than England and Wales. That is absolutely untrue. The hon. Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Stewart) is shaking his head. The rate support grant in his constituency is considerably higher than 68½ per cent.
There are some detailed points to make before dealing with general matters. I have increased the domestic rate element from 27p in the £ to 31p in the £ to moderate the increases for the domestic ratepayer. Incidentally, in 1977–78 there will be no increase in the domestic rate element in England and Wales. Dealing with offshore oil-related expenditure, there is a further increase in the element of grant from £4·9 million to £7·3 million. That was introduced by the Labour Government. I propose to review the present arrangement for this "extraordinary expenses" portion in the light of the past two years' experience.
Mr. Douglas Henderson rose——
Mr. Millan: I would give way to the hon. Gentleman, but we have only a limited amount of time. I know that the hon. Gentleman is interested in these matters, but if he has an opportunity to take part in the debate I shall try to answer his points when I reply.
856
I shall make one or two other points about the detail of the order. We have tilted a little the percentage of grant paid to district councils. I was unable to obtain agreement between the districts and regions in COSLA because the district councils took one view and the regional councils another. The way indicated last year was, we thought, on balance unfavourable to the district councils, and the proportion going to district councils in the current year has been increased by about 10 per cent., which is a slight redressing of the balance. I do not pretend that it is more than that. It means overall that the percentage of the grant taken by district councils will be greater in 1977–78 than it will be in 1976–77. Furthermore, there are provisions for 1977–78 about cash limits roughly on the same basis as in the current year.
I wish to deal with two main points. The first relates to the effect of this settlement on services for 1977–78. I have not attempted to provide detailed guidance on how local authorities should reduce their expenditure, because they do not wish me to do so. I have discussed this matter at considerable detail with them, and they prefer that I should deal with the matter on the basis contained in the order.
Secondly, in terms of the effect on services and generally, I accept that this is a tough settlement for local authorities. I have never pretended that it would be otherwise. I accept that it will mean that hard decisions will have to be taken by local authorities about their services. I hope the House will keep the matter in proportion. I have already said that the figure of increase in local government expenditure in real terms over the four years 1971–72 to 1975–76 is 31 per cent. If in the next year we ask local authorities to freeze expenditure or reduce it slightly, I do not believe we shall find that this will lead to the collapse of local authority services. Next year we shall still provide services at expenditure which, by historical standards, is high indeed and compares favourably with what we were doing only a couple of years ago.
Although I recognise that there are difficulties with local authorities, I do not accept some of the extravagant claims made to the effect that this order will

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mean the end of local authority services. The only way in which that could happen would be if local authorities were to accept the advice given by many leaders of Conservative groups in local government—for example, in Strathclyde—to go in for an indiscriminate slashing of services all round, resulting in appalling cuts in services. I am interested to know whether the hon. Member for Cathcart with his great enthusiasm for cutting public expenditure, will support that approach this evening. If that happens, services will collapse, but given the maximum amount of restraint, although tough decisions will have to be made by local authorities in the next year, there will be no question of services being arbitrarily damaged, as some critics have suggested.
I pay tribute to the local authorities for the way in which most have faced the task of keeping expenditure within the limits I have laid down. The fact that so many find this difficult is a reflection of the fact that in the last few years we have got used to considerable improvements each year with a great deal of additional expenditure. I accept that much of this comes from legislation, but the Government have not been passing legislation in the past couple of years adding to the burdens on local authorities. We do not intend to do that in the present difficult economic and financial situation. When we have been used to a situation in which every year people expect more expenditure, even just to get on to a plateau, to freeze expenditure, is very difficult.
The same general observation applies to local authority manpower. It is indisputable that in recent years local authority manpower has considerably increased every year. Even between May 1975 and March 1976, in a period when the Government had in the most explicit terms asked local authorities not to increase manpower, there was an increase of about 18,000 in the number of local authority employees in Scotland. If one excludes teachers, police officers and firemen—I accept that it was right that teachers should be recruited to get teaching standards up to accepted limits—the number of general local government full-time employees increased between May 1975 and June 1976 by 9,000, from
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139,000 to 148,000. The indications are that that is levelling off.
However, the exaggerated claims about redundancy should be set against the fact that until recently local government staffing was on a high rising trend. I repeat the point I have made on numerous occasions, that although I do not exclude the possibility of redundancy altogether—I accept that that may be necessary in certain areas in particular circumstances—I believe that the bulk of the problem can be dealt with by the use of recruitment policies, by natural wastage and, in some cases, by early retirement.
In summing up, may I say that obviously this is a tough settlement from the local authorities' point of view. It has given me no pleasure to ask local authorities to accept it. But, given our general economic situation, it is a fair settlement. Its effects, in some respects, although they will be serious enough in terms of rate increases in some areas, have been grossly exaggerated. I commend the order to the House.
12.8 a.m.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: I shall try to be brief because time is short and the Minister spoke for some time in a one and a half hours' debate. Hon. Members will want to speak on what is undoubtedly a catastrophic order, despite what the right hon. Gentleman said.
The Secretary of State put up a very poor case. He said that local authorities should not have been surprised about the 4 per cent. reduction. After the meeting on 22nd November, Sir George Sharp said:
"A number of us went into the meeting anticipating a slight reduction in the percentage, but to have been told that it was being savagely cut by 4 per cent. was something none of us expected."
That is the general picture we get from local authorities. The Minister said that the percentage was larger than in the Conservative Government's years in office but a point which he significantly omitted was that in every Conservative year from 1970 to 1974 there was an increase—65½ per cent. to 66 per cent. to 66½ per cent. to 68 per cent. It was a general percentage increase because we thought it right to change the burden from rates to taxation.
Mr. Dennis Canavan: I deplore the effects of the Government's cut as much as the hon. Gentleman does, but will he admit that the percentages he mentioned relating to the Conservative Government apply to a much lower base? Would the hon. Gentleman care to mention any Conservative Government which managed to give a rate support grant as great as 68½ per cent.?
Mr. Taylor: I do not accept that. The hon. Gentleman is well aware that the greatest expansion in public services made in the interests of the Scottish people occurred when the Conservative Party was in office. I had the pleasure of being in office in one of those years when there was a dramatic increase in social work services rather than the restrictions on cash imposed by the present Government.
The Minister said that people are not paying more as a percentage of income in rates. He must have picked very selective figures. He spoke only of manual workers' average earnings, and he talked about particular areas, but the fact is that, according to his own figures given to me last month, the amount of rates paid per head of population in Scotland has more than doubled in four years, and the amount paid per household has increased from £65 to £123, that is, almost double in four years. It should be recognised also that it is a question not just of incomes but of disposable incomes, and the increased tax percentages imposed by this Government mean that the proportion of disposable incomes taken by rates has increased substantially.
We are concerned about the order for four reasons. First, it will have serious consequences for Scotland, its people and its industry. It represents simply a transfer of revenue collection from taxation to the rates at a time when there is mounting evidence that rate levels are passing the point at which people and industry can afford to pay.
We read in the papers that on Tayside rates arrears of £2 million are still outstanding, despite efforts to get the money in, and debt recovery action is to start tomorrow. Strathclyde has a greater problem because burdens have soared and when this further substantial increase
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takes place it will mean a considerable reduction in the number of jobs available and in the number of commercial enterprises. Moreover, with an enhancement of domestic derating, there will be a greater burden on industry and commerce, and for every factory and shop which closes there will be more burden to be carried by the others.
I hope that the Secretary of State will take into account the particular difficulties in Glasgow, where the chamber of commerce is concerned about a likely increase of about 40 per cent. in the rates burden, which will have a catastrophic effect on jobs in Glasgow, especially when that increase comes on top of other higher costs, including the removal of REP and the rise in national insurance contributions.
The Minister has been short-sighted in his order. If, as he says in the White Paper, the object is to restrain public spending, he is in fact taking no action to ensure that public spending will be restrained. He has taken Pontius Pilate's attitude, washing his hands, cutting the Government grant, and saying "You must try to reduce public spending". But there is no guarantee that public spending will be cut. There is nothing to prevent local authorities from simply increasing the rates burden.
I believe, and my party believes, that it we are to have a measure of this kind there is need for the Government themselves to fix a limit to the percentage rate increases charged by local authorities. The Minister has given some advice about, for example, what can be done in staff recruitment. He may be aware that there was a shake-out at the time of the reorganisation in 1973. A lot of people retired voluntarily then, and the amount of voluntary wastage is now limited for that reason.
What worries us in addition is that the cut in grant is far more serious that it seems, because inflation will be worse than we expected. The Chancellor is now taking about 15 per cent.—the indications are that that may be an underestimate—and the increases will not be fully covered.
Second, there is the problem of debit balances, which the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities dealt with very thoroughly in its representations. Third, there are inescapable commitments which are the result of capital spending in

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previous years. Fourth, there will undoubtedly be a greater demand on local authority services, with the possibility that more children will stay on at school because of lack of employment, plus the certainty that there will be more hardship to be dealt with by social service departments, as well as the fact that we have more elderly people whose needs must be cared for.
I want some assurances about the elderly. Will the Under-Secretary of State responsible for health and social work assure me that they will be protected? Inevitably, one of the easiest cuts to make—they are being made now by some local authorities—is a cut in the home help service for the elderly. It is short-sighted to make that cut. It does not save money in the long term.
In these circumstances, bearing in mind that this order will have a serious effect in Scotland, where we have a serious economic problem already, what is the right course to take? There is the traditional argument that if we do not pass the order there will be no cash for the local authorities. We should like some clear assurances from the Minister. Will he review the order in the event of inflation being much worse than is anticipated? Is he willing to consider the possibility of imposing limits on rate increases?
There is no doubt that this order is a total condemnation of the Government's disastrous policies which have brought about a situation in which the Government have virtually run out of money and in which we now face unemployment and misery. Ratepayers will suffer enormously because of the Government's failure to act on the economy in time, and one consequence is this appalling order.
The Minister adopted a complacent attitude in his speech today. He should appreciate that the order will do great damage and cause great hardship. It will undoubtedly add to the catastrophic level of unemployment in Scotland.
12.17 a.m.
Mr. Robin F. Cook: The Secretary of State produced a large number of impressive figures about the increases in local authority expenditure and staffing over the last four or five years. I do not disagree
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with those figues, but we are deluding ourselves if we do not recognise that part of the blame for those increases rests in this Chamber.
I spent a considerable part of my time in the Library during the last interminable debate, and I can tell the Minister that in the course of the last three Sessions the Government have produced and passed 180 Acts. That leaves aside Bills sponsored by private Members and other private legislation. Many of those Acts have had an effect on the obligations, duties and staffing of local authorities, and some of the Acts are explicit about that. I served on the Committee that considered the Community Land Bill. The Explanatory Memorandum to that legislation makes the explicit statement that total staff increases resulting from it will be
"of the order of 12,000 in local authorities in England and Scotland."
The fact that we have not achieved that number is due to our miserable record in implementing the Act. But it was our intention. We did not hesitate to require staffing increases in local authorities when we brought forward that Act.
The blunt truth is that local authorities are creatures of statute. There is not a single thing that they do without Parliament passing a law to say that they must do it or that they may do it, and as soon as a law is passed that says that a local authority may do something, we can be certain that an hon. Member will stand up to say that they should do it.
It is not just through legislation that we affect local authority staffing and expenditure. In the Library this evening I had a look through the six green box files containing circulars issued by Ministers. Since 1st October no fewer than 33 separate circulars have been issued to local authorities by the Scottish Office. The prize must go to the Under-Secretary of State for the Scottish Office who during those two months, in the midst of the most acute crisis in local government finance that this generation has ever known, sent, for chief executives to read, no fewer than three circulars about what local authorities should be doing to prepare against a nuclear attack.
It is not enough to blame the Government. There is not an hon. Member who could lay his hand on his heart and say that he has not at any time during the last

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12 months written to his local authority to make a complaint or suggestion that would involve that authority in greater expenditure. If there has been an unacceptable increase in local authority expenditure, we are largely to blame. If it is true that local authorities are now spending too much and taking on more than the country can afford, let us accept the implications of that and legislate. Let us take off some of the obligations we have piled on them during the past two decades. The cuts envisaged in the order cannot be met if local authorities are to fulfil their present functions.
My right hon. Friend repeatedly contrasted the level of expenditure he approved last year with the level of expenditure he is approving for next year. He said that there was no cut. The real decision faced by local authorities is how to reconcile the money they will have this year with the money they spent in the past year. That involves a massive reduction and a threat to their functions.
The Lothian Regional Council met yesterday. I have been unable to receive details of the decisions taken, partly because the local newspaper is in dispute, but I have seen the options the council considered. The options, never mind the decisions, are sufficiently distressing. In education they involved reducing staffing levels and increasing the mileage that children had to walk to school from two to three miles before qualifying for a bus pass. In social work the options were to reduce the home help service by 5 per cent. and to reduce support to voluntary playgroups. Even in a service so basic and non-controversial as the police force, the suggestion was that vacancies should not be filled and that there should be a 10 per cent. cut in vehicle mileage, though I do not know how the police can cut mileage by 10 per cent. when they are in hot pursuit of a criminal.
I recognise that these are cuts in increases that we had four years ago. We have more teachers and more home helps and, no doubt, police vehicles do more mileage than they did four years ago. Nevertheless, they are real cuts which will cause difficulty and hardship.
I have received information on one decision taken yesterday. The Council decided to close the Citizens' Rights Office, which is supported as an urban
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aid project in my constituency to assist in the counselling of welfare claimants. That office will now close within a matter of weeks. I cannot think of a more classic illustration of the truth that when public expenditure is cut it is the poor and the inarticulate who suffer first. Those who are most vulnerable and least likely to complain are the ones who suffer first. The irony is that they are the people we are supposed to represent.
In my constituency there is a high proportion of elderly people. The area social work team that operates from the centre of my constituency has within its boundary 25 per cent. of all the retired persons in Edinburgh. These are the people who will suffer from the cut in the number of home helps, even if it is a cut in the increase of four years ago.
This weekend I received a deputation from a residents' association which expressed concern about the marked decline in the cleansing service. The people who live in city centres and in dense residential areas, in drab urban streets without amenities, are the ones who will suffer when environmental services start to decay as a result of the lack of money.
I have served on a local authority. I say that with some humility, as many hon. Members have served for far longer than I did, but I did not come to this place to set my hand against so much I fought for as a councillor. That brings me to what we must do tonight.
I have two observations to make. First, we are considering the largest single element of public expenditure in Scotland. What we decide tonight will have the most profound effect on the level of public services in Scotland for the coming year. It is outrageous that we should have to consider the order in a truncated debate lasting for one-and-a-half hours, with barely half an hour left for Back Benchers, at the fag end of the last debating day of the term, after midnight.
Secondly, we have been told that we cannot amend the order. Hon. Members who have been to the Table Office and the Public Bill Office in the past fortnight will be aware that we cannot amend it. It has been suggested to me and my colleagues over the past week by Ministers that we cannot oppose the order. If we oppose it, we are told, there will be no money for local authorities. That

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statement is based on a logical fallacy. We are not saying that we are against a Scottish rate support grant order. We are saying that we are against this Scottish rate support grant order.
Leaving that aside, the logic of what we have been told is that we cannot amend the order and that we cannot oppose it. What control does that leave this Chamber over what orders the Government may choose to introduce? It is high time that this Chamber reasserted some of its control over the Executive. I believe that we should make a start tonight by rejecting the order, which achieves simultaneously the remarkable feat of bringing about unacceptable cuts in local services and unacceptable increases in local taxation. I propose to divide the House at the end of the debate, and I hope that many hon. Members will join me.
12.25 a.m.
Mr. Donald Stewart: The Secretary of State did not, as far as I recall, make reference to the fact that the increase order was based on the assumption that inflation would be about 7 per cent. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is now talking of a rate of 15 per cent. and the possibility of a rise even beyond that figure. Who can doubt that that will take place? It is an important factor for local authorities, which have to budget ahead.
Nor do I think that the comparisons that the right hon. Gentleman made between Scotland and England and Wales were quite fair. I shall not argue about whether the Scottish figures are higher or lower, but I must remind him that there have been two valuations in Scotland compared with only one in England. For that and other reasons, I do not think it is possible to make comparisons between the English and Scottish systems.
The right hon. Gentleman pointed out that the local authority in my constituency was receiving the highest rate of grant. I do not deny that. But it is for a simple reason, and it is unfair to make that kind of reference. The reason lies in the needs formula. It is because of the poverty of the area. We have a ratio of persons over 65 of one in four as against one in eight on the mainland, and the local authority has many other problems. At the same time, we have huge
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areas without a secondary school. The Scottish Office has recognised the need in principle.
I make no apology for the Western Isles being in receipt of a very high level of rate support grant. Their greater poverty is the reason why they are faced with even more severe problems than other areas of Scotland have.
Before 1973 it was impossible for the local authorities in Scotland to rate for the balances, and that is another factor which places them at a disadvantage compared with the English local authorities.
I join the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) in his protest against the time allowed for a speech on this vital matter for Scottish local authorities, and I also am surprised that, apart from the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor), only three Scottish Tories are interested in this subject.
12.28 a.m.
Mr. David Lambie: I shall not go over the arguments put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook). I accept them all. In the short time we have for this debate, I shall make only two points.
First, I shall take part in the revolt against the Government and vote against the order. Like my hon. Friend, I am fed up with being a rubber stamp for confidential negotiations in which I, as a Member of Parliament, have taken no part. I ask that in future, if hon. Members are to have the final say on the level of the rate support grant in Scotland, we shall have open negotiations and open government, and do away with confidentiality.
Not only are we, as Members of Parliament, complaining about this confidentiality and the fait accompli with which we are faced. Most of the members of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities are also complaining because unless Councillors are on the working party or the various negotiating committees they do not know what has been negotiated. They, too, are faced with a fait accompli. If in future my right hon. Friend does not want a Back Bench revolt he must see that we get open government and that negotiations are carried on in the open, with Members of

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Parliament participating, if, at the end of the day, we have to take the final vote.
My second argument relates to the actual distribution of the rate support grant. Arising from what I understand to have been a confidential proposal of the working party on local government finance, the districts' share of the RSG will be allocated to them on the basis of a weighted population with special allowances for density of population. This is a new element in the RSG. Because we are now using density of population, rich Tory and SNP areas such as Bearsden and Milngavie, Eastwood and East Kilbride, will have an advantage over poor Labour areas such as Cumnock and Doon Valley, Dunbarton, and my own district of Cunninghame. Because of this change in the negotiations and using part of the formula based on density of population, areas like my own district will suffer.
I realise the thinking behind it. If we use density of population, Glasgow must benefit. No matter how it is calculated, density of population will always benefit Glasgow because, even with a falling population, it has some of the most densely populated areas in the United Kingdom. I do not mind subsidising Glasgow and its Labour supporters, but I object to my own people in the Cuninghame district subsidising the Tories and SNP supporters in East Kilbride, Bearsden, Eastwood and all the other areas peripheral to the urban centre of Glasgow.
I ask my right hon. Friend to change this element and to realise that in areas like the Cunninghame district, because of an Act of Parliament, we have, in addition to traditional industrial towns and villages which are running down at present, areas such as the Kilbirnie Hills, which are moorland areas with no financial advantage to the local authorities, and we have island areas such as Arran and Cumbrae which might be attractive but which are expensive to service. Because we have these large areas with very low total populations, our density of population is reduced and we get a reduction in RSG.
If these negotiations had been carried out in public, this change to using density of population as one of the elements in
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calculating the RSG would never have been allowed. That is why I shall be taking part in the revolt against the Government tonight.
12.33 a.m.
Mr. Russell Johnston: It is not my contention that the extent of Government assistance to local authorities is unreasonable in present circumstances. What is arguable is the way that it is applied, which in many respects is unfair.
The rate support grant system formula is, after all, only marginally clearer to the ordinary person than some of the more esoteric forms of Eastern religions. Certainly it is no clearer to the ordinary man in the street. What is more, it is very difficult for Members of Parliament to criticise it, because we do not understand it, and a great many people in local government do not understand it, either.
What is relatively clear is that the new formula devised by the Government takes away from the rural areas and gives to the urban areas. In the case of the Highlands area, part of which I represent, the loss has been calculated to be about £2·25 million a year.
What is equally clear and equally inexplicable is that the basis of the system seems to be unrelated to any kind of United Kingdom system or pattern, and that is particularly odd because the Government are engaged in introducing a devolution Bill, the basis of which is that there should be the same standard of grant and the same treatment throughout the United Kingdom.
My hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) asked a question which was designed to compare the Borders with Powys, in Wales, two areas that are similar in size and population. The populations are 99,000 and 100,000, and the areas are much the same, at 1,154,000 for the Borders and 1,250,000 for Powys. Yet gross expenditure on Government grant is 75 per cent. in the case of the Borders and 85 per cent. for Powys. All other things appear to be equal. Why is there this distinction?
My area has been recognised for a long time by Governments as requiring development. The Highlands and Islands Development Board was set up by the Labour Government in 1967. Yet

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the projected protected rate of 147p, which is the estimated rate for the region, has been boosted by the rate support grant reduction of 16p and the redistribution of 7p. If the Government's objective remains, as it was with their predecessors, to equalise rates at some rough line by producing some sort of formula, that is fine, but we must face the fact that there is no equivalent level of standard of service. The Government must regard that as unsatisfactory. The Minister should take another look at the formula which has been agreed. In theory it is fine, but in practice it puts a heavy burden on the rural areas which are least able to bear it.
Why are road lengths excluded from the rate support grant calculations? The Government have sought to give general support to local authorities in times of expenditure restriction. But I complain bitterly that the rural areas which the Government claim to wish to develop are being squeezed and denied support by a method which the Labour Party, when in opposition, criticised when it was used by the Conservatives. That is most unsatisfactory.
12.38 a.m.
Mr. Norman Buchan: I shall be brief, especially in view of the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook). Most of us, however, wish to make our views known on this issue and to show clearly where we stand. This is the first time that I have spoken on the subject of local government, so I must have been moved a great deal to embark upon this complex subject.
There seems to be a curious myth, which is being perpetuated by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) and even by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. It is that we can solve the problems of expensive local government by sacking one or two highlypaid administrators.
Mr. Lambie: It would help.
Mr. Buchan: It might help morale, but it is a myth which we should not seek to perpetuate, even in the course of interjections such as that. The truth is that the kind of cuts which will be demanded as a result of this measure will make a massive inroad into the services
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provided. It might affect one service or a dozen services, and it might mean one service going altogether.
It is nonsense to suggest that the problem lies with highly-paid officials in town halls. That is the charge that we hear continually, but it is lodging the issue. The issue is that local government gives the direct service and carries out the wishes of the House in the sectors, for example, of education and social services.
Mr. Robin F. Cook: For the poor.
Mr. Buchan: As my hon. Friend says, it does so for the poor. The rich do not require assistance. They can buy what they need or want. It is the poorest section of the community that is to be hit. Local government has many devoted officials who receive few thanks but who have the task of implementation.
I have been disturbed by the loss of morale of local councillors in Scotland. Many good councillors tell me that they will not stand again. That is because of the vicious distortions by the Press and certain politicians about councillor's allowances. There are at least three councillors in my area who lose heavily. Councillors can no longer accept the continual Press distortions.
The regional and district councils have been in existence for a year and a half. The councillors say that they have discussed only what to cut, not what should be done. That has not been good for their morale. When that happens, it is not healthy democracy.
I listened to the humbug of the hon. Member for Cathcart. He must be honest enough to say, if he wishes to cut rates and taxes, that he is demanding greater and greater cuts in services. We could do with a little honesty, whatever section of pondlife it may come from.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: If we are to have grant reductions of this sort because of the serious situation in Scotland, I accept that there must be substantial cuts in local authority spending.
Mr. Buchan: Perhaps they would be welcomed by the hon. Gentleman.
What is now taking place must be set against the background of the real economic climate. I do not blame the

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Government for the crisis, although I blame them for some of the measures that they have taken to deal with it. For example, it is nonsense to think that by sacking people in local government we shall boost labour in manufacturing industry. That is not true. There is no mechanism to redirect such resources, and we all know it.
We have the choice of sacking people or of increasing the rates. A rate increase has been suggested for the Strathclyde Region which is a good region. It has been dragged into the debate by the SNP for party political purposes. The SNP does not choose to run an election in the Strathclyde Region or elsewhere on independence. Its slogans are attacks on Strathclyde. In many ways it is one of the best local councils I have met. That is the view of many who have been closely involved in these matters.
The problem is that rates are an unfair system of taxation. National taxation is fairest. A time of increasing economic difficulties for the country and for individuals is precisely the wrong time to alter the balance by increasing rates. That is the economic argument why the balance should not be changed.
I ask my right hon. Friend to think again. I have enormous respect for him but I sometimes think that he does not always feel close to local government. I wish that he could feel closer to it as it is the sector of government that carries out the demands that are made by the House.
12.44 a.m.
Mr. Robert Hughes: I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to put me out of my misery about balances and enable me to sleep tonight. It has been said that it has not always been possible to rate for balances. We may be speaking about different things, but when I was in local government in Aberdeen we used to run a rates reserve fund. We ran a surplus to be used for various purposes in future years. Either I acted illegally for a number of years as a local councillor or we are speaking of different things when talking about balances and rating reserves.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) rightly emphasised the responsibilities that the House
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places on local authorities. What has not been mentioned is the ongoing effect that Government decisions directly have on capital expenditure. Every time that capital expenditure is approved, there follows a revenue cost. Insufficient account has been taken of this. This situation has reached the point of absurdity.
Yesterday the Labour group on the Grampian Regional Council pressed very hard that five nursery schools which have been built in the region should be opened. The local authority says that it can open only one of the schools, to which it can transfer staff, but that four nursery schools will remain closed because it cannot afford to staff them.
Are there any other examples of this throughout Scotland, and how often will it be repeated in the coming year? The Grampian authority could very well open the nursery schools, because I do not believe that the public expenditure cuts could have had their effect so quickly. It is the tip of the iceberg and it illustrates the problem. There is no point in the Government sanctioning a great public capital expenditure programme and boasting about all the capital expenditure they have authorised when they do not recognise that there is no point in, for instance, having buildings if they cannot be staffed. Because of this decision, a large number of children cannot attend nursery school. As I said in a speech on the Barber cuts, it is always working-class children that suffer. I hope that my right hon. Friend will recognise this and take appropriate action.
12.47 a.m.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: I strongly support my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan) in his reference to what he suggested was the sport of councillor-bashing. If the Scottish Press continues with its campaign, the result will be that people will be unwilling to run for public office.
I want to ask one question which I have raised before as a matter of special pleading. Will my right hon. Friend reflect on whether he ought not in the new year to consider with his officials giving a definite directive to the new town of Livingston? My hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie)—who is on the Front Bench—and I are

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bothered about the whole issue of Livingston. I realise the difficulties attached to special pleading, but the fact is that this new town is unique because of its size and the stage it is at. The way in which it is consuming the resources of Lothian Region worries the whole region, including my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook).
For what it is worth, I shall support the Government tonight. I think that it must be done. We are borrowing from abroad. No more may be said about them. Perhaps I may in the same breath ask forgiveness for wondering how my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council, who does us the great courtesy of being present for this Scottish debate, can in the light of this measure support the expense of the Assembly. I leave it at that.
12.49 a.m.
Mr. Richard Buchanan: Last week representatives of the Strathclyde Regional Council came to see hon. Members to express their apprehensions about the cuts that were envisaged in the rate support grant. I think that those councillors will be a deal happier tonight. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State merits the congratulations of all Members on saving the hundreds of jobs at the Marathon shipyard.
Where did the £13 million come from? Was it plucked out of the air or from savings? I have badgered the Government about their policies for redevelopment and the revitalisation of Scottish industry. For the first time we see that they are serious in their intention to revitalise industry in Britain. Marathon is a triumph for my right hon. Friend.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook), with his usual perception, hit the nail on the head when he said that the present trouble was our fault, that we made the decisions, and so we had 13·5 per cent. inflation, 1½ million unemployed, massive overspending of £11 billion, a balance of payments deficit of £2 billion, interests rates of 15 per cent. and virtually no growth. That is why my right hon. Friend has had to take the action he has taken on the rate support grant. He had no option.
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My hon. Friend and some others are going to rebel against the Government tonight. They are entitled to do that, in a democratic assembly, but where will the local authorities get their money? The rate support grant does not deal simply with next year. There is current expenditure to be met to April 1977. If my hon. Friends defeat the order, they will put the local authorities in considerable trouble. There is no point in rebelling in these circumstances. My hon. Friends will make the difficulties of the Strathclyde and Lothian councillors a sight greater than they are now, and they will get worse.
Whatever policies we may have pursued six months, 12 months or 18 months ago, those options are no longer open. We have only one way to go. Today's decision on Marathon is an indication that we may be going the right way. There is no point in talking about reflation now. The other way, the siege economy advocated by some of my hon. Friends, would make the position of the Strathclyde and Lothian councillors very much worse than it is or will be under this order. My advice to my hon. Friends is to vote with the Government and try to do what is possible to improve the proposals in the order.
Having said all that in support of the Government, I must say that I am particularly worried about housing. When we start rebuilding there is always a shortage of carpenters, joiners, plumbers and bricklayers. When we halt the construction industry we halt the training of apprentices, who are vital to the future of the industry. I ask the Government to have another look at industry. Transport is an essential part.
If we are to revitalise, I do not want the transport grant to be mixed up in the rate support grant, as the old block grant was and subject to the constant erosion of special pleading. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be specific in identifying the money allocated to public transport.
I urge my right hon. Friend, having done a splendid job for Marathon, and the workers employed there, realising the difficulties of our colleagues in Strathclyde, Lothian and the other regions, to use his best endeavours to increase where possible the rate support grant for the deprived areas of Scotland.
12.53 a.m.
Mr. Dennis Canavan: I am opposed to the decrease in the grant because it will mean a decrease in people's living standards. I speak as one who in the past has not been entirely uncritical of certain aspects of local government spending. I make no apologies for referring again to the cheap home loan scandal involving highly paid executives in the Central Region, which covers part of my own local authority. I spoke out at the time, and have done so since. Those people, highly paid and in responsible positions, deserve no sympathy from me or the public, who have to foot the bill for their breaking of the law.
But to keep the matter in perspective I must add that the money involved in such abuses is a drop in the ocean of local government expenditure, most of which is essential spending on the social services. We must differentiate between the minimal extravagance and the vast bulk of local government expenditure which is absolutely necessary.
Local authorities are now being asked to cut back their spending programmes to such an extent that they are in danger of being unable to fulfil some of their statutory duties. Obviously, those who will suffer are those most in need, such as the old, who depend on social services such as meals on wheels, luncheon clubs, home helps and so on. The disabled are dependent on assistance for alterations to their homes to make life easier—for example, ramps for wheelchairs. Young people in education—not just formal education, but in the wider aspects of education such as leisure and recreation—will be affected.
There is also the threat of redundancy hanging over the heads of many local government workers. It is not good enough for the Secretary of State or for anyone else to say that these proposals can go through without massive redundancies taking place. Such redundancies are inevitable if the proposed cuts go ahead. According to trade union representatives, who are closer to the situation than either the Secretary of State or myself, massive redundancies will affect their members.
I have seen some of the options before the Central Regional Council, part of which comes into my constituency. It
876
has some very painful decisions to make between redundancies and trying to maintain services of even minimum standards.
The whole Labour movement throughout the country, not just in this House, has always believed in municipal Socialism and involvement in local government in order to redistribute a fair amount of wealth and opportunity in favour of those who are most in need. The advances and achievements which have been made in the past half century are in danger of being dismantled. Those who are now speaking out and being critical of the Government in this respect are not only a militant minority but responsible people who have given a lifetime of service in local government.
An increase in public or local government expenditure is not intrinsically evil. I want to see more public and local government expenditure. But we shall not get it with the silly policies advocated by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor). We shall get it only by convincing the Treasury that it has the wrong economic strategy because it is not Socialist enough. For example, we should not throw away good, profitable public investment in BP shares.
By decreasing public investment and public expenditure we shall be going contrary to the manifesto on which we were elected. I shall continue to fight not for a siege economy, but for an alternative Socialist growth economy. That is why I shall vote against the order.
12.53 a.m.
Mr. George Younger (Ayr): This is an appalling hour of night at which to have such an important debate. I hope that the Leader of the House will note what has been said and that this time next year he will arrange for this important debate to be taken at a better time for Scottish Members.
The one point that we must get across to the Secretary of State is that the cuts will be considerably more severe and unpleasant than he seems to realise. That is certainly the view of the local authority associations. Indeed, all those who have been to see us believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that the right hon Gentleman does not realise the seriousness of these cuts and their effects.
This unhappy chapter started at the beginning of the new local government

877
set-up with the guidelines which were drawn up on which these grants are still being based, albeit at a year or two years' remove. The guidelines—the best which could be devised at the time—were not specific. They were not carefully calculated. Indeed, they were very much in the nature of a guesstimate. Guidelines were the original source of the trouble and the reason why the first rate support grant orders turned out to be much less accurate than one would have hoped. Built upon that there is mounting inflation and the great difficulties that have arisen.
It is no use the Secretary of State just saying that because he warned local authorities about this they ought to have been able to deal with it. It is true that he has been warning them. We have seen the warnings in the Press. But it is not as easy as that for one who is running a local authority, particularly an authority without much experience, to make these tremendous sea changes quite suddenly and as quickly as has been requested.
The Secretary of State cannot underestimate the fact that, whether by accident or for some other reason, he has not made sufficient allowance for inflation in the calculations. The local authority associations have complained that they were given an allowance of 7 per cent. for inflation in a year in which it turned out to be running at an annual rate of 10.9 per cent., and the authorities are carrying the difference.
Many Acts of Parliament that have been introduced by previous Governments and even by the present Government cannot be undone. Local authorities are forced to provide more expenditure and more people to fulfil the provisions of those Acts. Everyone has been encouraging local authorities to get extra police, for example, and they have been able to get some in the last year or two. But it all costs money. The local authorities have a legitimate case. They feel that they are not able to reverse the ship as quickly as the Secretary of State has requested.
Then there is the National Insurance Surcharge. Local authorities never expected that. The Government introduced that out of the blue. Just as it affects industry very seriously, the 2 per
878
cent. surcharge on the employer's contribution affects local government, which is very labour-intensive as we all know, in exactly the same way. Allowance has not been made for that, either. All of this is piled upon us now.
Having said all that, I hope that all hon. Members will realise that the Secretary of State has no option but to bring before us this measure. His Government have so failed in their economic policy that they have run out of money and cannot afford to give a better order than that before us. The Secretary of State is in the unhappy position of having to put this across to us and the local authorities, and we must feel doubly sorry for him in what he is having to do because he knows that he would very much rather not do it.
Here my sympathy rather evaporates. Labour Members below the Gangway—if in this case that is the right way of describing them—have been talking grandly about a revolt tonight. If this was something that had been done over their dead bodies, I would have some sympathy. However, they are turning on their own Government when it is they who have been pressing the Government all the time that they have been in office to overstep the mark, to increase the rate of inflation, to reflate the economy, to spend more on everything and to increase public expenditure.
It is the Left wing that has been asking for this all the time. The result of what they have done—they have been very successful—is to lead the Government into the runaway inflation which has led the Secretary of State and his colleagues into the deeply unhappy situation in which they now find themselves, and it has led all their local authority friends into the position of having to face a rate support grant order much less generous than anyone would have wished.
Hon. Members who are thinking so grandly of their consciences tonight and of revolting against their own Government ought to have a care for the fact that they have put the Government where they are. It is very largely their fault that the Government are there. If hon. Members had half the decency that they should have, they would support the Secretary of State tonight in his unpleasant task. If they do not do so, they will be

879
going against everything that they have forced the Government to do. The Secretary of State has an unenviable task and is giving local authorities a very difficult task. Unfortunately, the incompetence of the Government gives them no option.
1.4 a.m.
Mr. Millan: That was a particularly equivocal speech, even from the Opposition Front Bench. However, at least tonight we have got the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) on record as saying that he is in favour of major cuts in public expenditure at local authority level. I suppose that it is some little advance to have that on record.
As to the timing of the debate, I am sorry that because of the loquaciousness of the English and the Welsh, the debate came on rather later than I would have wished.
I make the point that it is important from the point of view of the local authorities that we approve this order tonight. It would put the local authorities at a considerable disadvantage if the order were not effective before Christmas. That is why it is before us tonight. Perhaps my hon. Friends will have that in mind when they come to vote.
If by any mischance or miscalculation the order were not approved, I am afraid that the £60 million which the local authorities are due to receive under the increase order could not be paid. We are to begin these payments in January. Without the order the local authorities will not get the money.
Mr. Buchan: In the event of the order being rejected tonight, we would expect my right hon. Friend to introduce an even better order in January.
Mr. Millan: If my hon. Friend is expecting me to introduce an even better order, he is being rather optimistic. We have considered all these points in proposing the settlement. To delay the order will simply do damage to local authorities.
It is not true, despite what my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) has said, that the Government have continually placed
obligations upon local authorities. I accept that local authorities carry out obligations which are largely imposed on them by this House. But we have been careful in recent years to limit considerably any additional obligations on local authorities.
Mention might have been made of my statement on 5th November about considerable changes in procedures for dealing with, for example, educational building projects for local authorities. These will considerably reduce the amount of staff time involved at local authority and Government level. There are a lot of other things I could mention, given time, to demonstrate that we are seriously attempting to disengage from a number of procedures in which we are involved so as to save staff time.
I do not accept that the order will lead to massive reductions in services. My hon. Friends have referred to the police. The police staffing figures for the past year are interesting. In the period between May 1975 and June 1976 the number of policemen in Scotland rose from 11,900 to 12,800. It is absurd to argue that unless we have constant increases the whole of the service will collapse. I do not accept that as a serious statement of the position.
We know that there is room for economy in local authority expenditure without damaging services. I do not pretend that all of the economies over the next year can be made painlessly. The local authorities have never said that to me. Equally, they have never said that there are no areas of local authority expenditure where certain economies cannot be made without causing considerable damage.
Of course the order has to be taken in conjunction with the economic background. In other situations I should like to produce a more generous order. A number of painful decisions have been taken by local authorities in difficult circumstances. Equally—
It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted Business):—
The House divided: Ayes 66, Noes 19.

Division No. 26.]

AYES

[1.10 a.m.

Archer, Peter

Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood

Armstrong, Ernest

Bates, Alf

Bishop, E. S.

Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

Harper, Joseph

Rowlands, Ted

Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)

Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)

Brown, Ronald (Hackney S)

Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)

Snape, Peter

Buchanan, Richard

Jones, Alec (Rhondda)

Stallard, A.W.

Campbell, Ian

Judd, Frank

Stoddart, David

Cocks, Rt Hon Michael (Bristol S)

Kaufman, Gerald

Strang, Gavin

Coleman, Donald

Kerr, Russell

Tinn, James

Cowans, Harry

Leadbitter, Ted

Tomlinson, John

Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

McElhone, Frank

Urwin, T. W.

Cryer, Bob

MacFarquhar, Roderick

Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)

Dalyell, Tam

MacKenzie, Gregor

Ward, Michael

Davidson, Arthur

Marks, Kenneth

White, James (Pollok)

Deakins, Eric

Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

Whitehead, Phillip

de Freitas, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Mendelson, John

Williams, Alan (Swansea W)

Dormand, J. D.

Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

Wilson, Rt Hon Sir Harold (Huyton)

Duffy, A. E. P.

Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

Woodall, Alec

Eadie, Alex

Moyle, Roland

Woof, Robert

Ewing, Harry (Stirling)

Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Freeson, Reginald

Roper, John

Mr. Joseph Ashton and

Golding, John

Ross, Rt Hon W. (Kilmarnock)

Mr. James Hamilton.

Graham, Ted

NOES

Bain, Mrs Margaret

Lambie, David

Thorpe, Rt Hon Jeremy (N Devon)

Buchan, Norman

MacCormick, Iain

Watt, Hamish

Carmichael, Neil

McMillan, Tom (Glasgow C)

Welsh, Andrew

Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)

Selby, Harry

Craigen, Jim (Maryhill)

Steel, David (Roxburgh)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Ewing, Mrs Winifred (Moray)

Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)

Mr. Denis Canavan and

Henderson, Douglas

Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

Mr. Robert Hughes.

Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

Thompson, George

Question accordingly agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Rate Support Grant (Scotland)Order 1976, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th December, be approved.

ADJOURNMENT

Resolved,

That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr.Stoddart.]

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes past One o'clock.

  LORD ADVOCATE v. WADDELL
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Preamble
The House met at eleven of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Durham.

CYPRUS
Baroness ELLES: 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 is their view on the recent reports from the United Nations Peace-keeping Force in Cyprus, as reported in The Times of 13th December.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government deplore the looting of property on the Island whether it belongs to Greek Cypriots or Turkish Cypriots. It is, however, difficult to pass judgment on the basis of newspaper reports. None the less, the situation as reported confirms Her Majesty's Government's view that the humanitarian talks to discuss problems such as this should be restarted in Nicosia as soon as possible.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. May I ask the Minister whether he can assure the House that Her Majesty's Government still retain a degree of responsibility for the people of Cyprus under the Treaty of Guarantee, and whether he can give to the Greek Cypriots living in the Southern part of the Island any hope of their ever having a chance to go back to their homes? Secondly, what has been done to get any compensation for the many British citizens living in the North of the Island who have had their homes looted?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, as to our responsibilities under the Treaty and Agreement of 1960, I think
1300
we have discharged them faithfully. The commitment was as I described in this House at the time and I shall on any future occasion be glad to repeat this. It is a tripartite undertaking, and ever since the later phases of the disturbances and difficulties on the Island we have striven with the Turkish and Greek authorities in Greece, in Turkey and on the Island, and also with like-minded countries, particularly in the Nine and the US, to endeavour to do what the noble Baroness rightly stressed is necessary; that is, to get going again the two conferences which the Secretary-General of the United Nations set afoot, with initial hopes of success, first on the humanitarian level in Nicosia (about which I agree with the noble Baroness) and, secondly, more comprehensively, on the analogy of the two Geneva conferences which the present Prime Minister, then Foreign Secretary, initiated and in relation to which he came very close indeed to a sensible solution of this problem.
Lord MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, while noting with pleasure the reply of the noble Lord to the first Question, may I ask whether in the New Year he will seek to reinvigorate the Co-chairmen's Committee, of which we are one member`? Will he further raise in the United Nations the tragic position of the Greek Cypriots in Cyprus, and will he make contact with the new Administration in Washington so that America may help to use her influence to bring to an end the inhumanities that have been committed in Cyprus and work out a humane and just settlement of the problems of Greece and Turkey there?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I can say at once to my noble friend that the three points of diplomatic activity he has so concisely mentioned are very much part of our continuing policy in this matter. May I, while I am replying to him, apologise to the noble Baroness for not having addressed myself to the two other very important points that she raised? Her second point was the need to get, as she termed it, the Greek Cypriots back to their homes. This and any similar humanitarian problem is most usefully and urgently discussed in the humanitarian conference, as it is called, in Nicosia.

1301
On the third point, about compensation, may I detain your Lordships; for it is an important matter? I should like to say that a senior officer of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office visited Cyprus and Turkey between 19th and 28th October. I do not think I have had the opportunity to say this in this House before and I am grateful for the opportunity to do so now. During this visit he urged the Government of Cyprus, the Turkish Government and the Turkish Cypriot authorities in Cyprus to give early consideration to British claims for compensation which have been, and are being, addressed to them. I have details of how our own post is handling this and handing over the claims which are being formulated and put together. If the noble Baroness would like to discuss these with me I shall be delighted, as always, to see her.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, the noble Lord does not need to rely on newspaper reports to get information about Turkish looting in the North. The United Nations has compiled a dossier detailing these allegations. Would the noble Lord ensure that this dossier is published so that the evidence is available to the whole world? Does he recall that when a number of Parliamentarians visited Cyprus at the beginning of this year we reported to the Foreign Office Ministers and gave them first-hand evidence which we had received of looting of property in the North, including properties owned by British citizens?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am aware of the Parliamentary visit, and the noble Lord is aware that my right honourable friend the Minister of State who deals with this part of the world is also engaged in a fairly prolonged and comprehensive fact-finding mission on the Island. As to the basis for the article—written by a most reputable journalist, if I may say so, and, I would add, in a most reputable newspaper—this appears to be the availability to him of utterly confidential official documents which are not in fact, by agreement, available to Member States of the United Nations, not even to those who are involved in UNFICYP. Therefore, it would be quite inappropriate for me to endeavour to secure copies of such a confidential document for Her Majesty's Government's use, and still less to publish
1302
them, as the noble Lord has so enticingly invited me to do.
Baroness ELLES: My Lords, I was encouraged by t he reply of the noble Lord because I realise his deep concern on the humanitarian issues in Cyprus. Can he tell us whether Her Majesty's Government have considered the proposal which has been made previously from these Benches and in another place, that a high ranking European should be asked to serve in Cyprus for a long period in order to establish a negotiating position between the parties? This might be a more satisfactory way of reaching a peaceful solution than leaving it to some more formal body.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, if I may say so, that is a substantial and responsible suggestion. We are aware of it. I have no doubt that the Secretary-General, who is the initiator of both sets of talks, will have taken advice on it already. It is well that the noble Baroness should mention it again at this juncture.
Lord DENHAM: Next Question!
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, the noble Lord referred to the humanitarian and political conferences. In view of the fact that the political conference has been taking place for months, if not years, is it not desirable that a bolder initiative should be taken for a settlement of the problem of Cyprus on the lines suggested by my noble friend Lord Caradon?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I would unhesitatingly assure the House that any new initiative, however broad, would be most favourably considered by Her Majesty's Government, always of course in consultation with like-minded countries, particularly in the Commonwealth, among the Nine and indeed in the United States. There is absolutely no doubt about this. It is a matter of feasibility, and it is also a matter of how far at a certain juncture one substitutes for probably the most authoritative initiative of all, that of the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
The fact is that both types of conference were set afoot under the auspices of Dr. Waldheim. Both have stalled since

1303
the spring of this year. We deplore this, but since February the comprehensive discussions on the political future have not, because of inter-communal prejudice and animosity, been able to continue. We are assiduous diplomatically in trying to get them resumed. We equally hope that at the humanitarian level the perfectly reasonable process of having meetings in Nicosia between the parties concerned—wherever the blame lies for any particular incident at any particular time—will be resumed under the auspices of the United Nations.

SEAL SANDS, TEESSIDE
11.16 a.m.
Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY: 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 propose to celebrate European Wetlands Year by taking over Seal Sands, Teesside, for port development.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): My Lords, no. We have celebrated European Wetlands Year by ratifying the Ramsar Convention and have so far designated 13 sites.
Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that part of the Answer to my Question, may I ask what will happen to Seal Sands, Teesside? Is she aware that this is a site of the greatest international scientific importance, that it is an important staging post for migratory birds and that it would be irreplaceable if destroyed?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I am aware of the special scientific interest of the site. In the Teesside structure plan, the Secretary of State has proposed that Seal Sands be made available for port development. I must point out to the noble Lord that no final decision has yet been taken and all objections to the proposed Amendments will be fully considered
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before the Secretary of State makes a decision.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that we are grateful for the interest that she has shown in this matter, following the submission made by the Durham County Conservation Trust? Is she also aware that there is constant spoliation taking place on the coastline of Durham by the National Coal Board and other organisations? All the remaining amenities are gradually being destroyed. Would she give these matters her attention?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, not only am I aware of them, but the Secretary of State and the Government are aware of these problems. It is always a question of balancing the environment with the needs of industry and development in that area. I am sure my noble friend is well aware of that side of the problem as well.

NORTH SEA OIL PRICES
11.18 a.m.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: 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, in the interest of the balance of payments, it is necessary to sell all North Sea oil at prevailing OPEC world prices; or whether they would consider some price differential for oil destined for United Kingdom consumption which, while remaining profitable, would at some lower figure aid British industry and transport.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, the Government do not believe that differential pricing of North Sea oil to domestic consumers would be a desirable way of distributing the benefits from oil among the British people. It would be contrary to the Treaty of Rome, since it would distort competition within the EEC; and it would lead to a misallocation of resources, and result in the wasteful use of our national oil reserves. North Sea oil consumed in the United Kingdom will provide a balance of payments benefit

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in the form of import savings. This benefit will naturally be related to prevailing world prices and will be independent of domestic pricing policy.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, does not the noble Lord think he is foresaking common sense for neatness in giving that Governmental Answer? It is clear that it is home industry that needs some help, if that is possible, in order to he able to compete with other countries. This seems to be a way, by utilising our own resources, of giving a slight benefit to ourselves; and we can help industry which, in the long run, will he helpful to the whole nation.
Lord STRABOLGI: If oil were available more cheaply to industry in the United Kingdom than in countries which compete with us in world trade, British goods would be given a competitive advantage. But passing on the benefits of cheap oil would be tantamount to selling our oil abroad at less than its proper market value.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether his reply does not mean that Britain must tag along behind the price levels decided by the OPEC countries, which prices will he based on the enrichment of their own territories and not on world considerations for trade? Would it not be wise to consider some differential so that British industry should have a fair chance in relation to world prices of oil?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, a better distribution of the benefits from oil is obtained if it is priced at its full market value and taxed accordingly. The fiscal regime established by the present Government will, we believe, ensure that the British people will receive a fair share of the benefits from our national oil resources. As regards OPEC prices, the prices for North Sea oil are determined by the companies in line with world market prices. Her Majesty's Government have an interest in ensuring that North Sea oil is priced at its full market value.
Lord HALE: My Lords, could the noble Lord say when the conclusion was reached that the fixing of prices by OPEC
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was an accurate method of assessing the market value or the market shortage? Would the noble Lord also say what steps the EEC are now taking against Saudi Arabia for undercutting the prices of other countries, or against the other countries concerned about over-pricing Saudi Arabia?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I did not say that our prices are governed by OPEC. There are oil producers other than the OPEC countries.
Viscount ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, would the noble Lord not confirm that, unless OPEC keeps prices up, the difficulties of extracting oil from under the North Sea would mean that in fact it would become uneconomic to do so?
Lord STRABOLGI: Not necessarily, my Lords. A reduction in oil prices could also have its compensations for the economy. Over the period that we remain net importers our balance of payments would benefit, and even thereafter there could be gains from a general increase in world trade. North Sea development prospects depend more on the longer-term prospects for oil prices than on short-term fluctuations.

THE JET PROJECT: SITING
11.22 a.m.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: 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 make a statement on the EEC negotiations about the site of the JET (Power by Fusion) Project following Herr Guido Brunner's statement in Brussels on 20th December.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, no official text of Dr. Brunner's statement of 20th December has yet been made available. The Research Council planned for 20th December to consider JET was cancelled last Friday because the President judged that there was no chance of agreement this year. The United Kingdom assumes the presidency of the

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Council on 1st January and will continue to seek agreement on the project and its site as a matter of urgency.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for that reply, and particularly for his assurance that the Government regard this as a matter of very great urgency, could he say whether there is any reason to suppose that our French allies and partners have a hand in this troublesome situation?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, it was not the United Kingdom. Dr. Brunner did not disclose the identity of the odd man out.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, can my noble friend tell us whether it is still the firm intention of Her Majesty's Government to press for JET to be sited at Culham? Can he also say whether there have been offers made to the present JET design team as a whole to go to America?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, we shall certainly continue to press for Culham, which we believe to be much the best site. With regard to the offers made to the JET design team, I am advised that no formal offers have been received by the United Kingdom members of the team. I am afraid I have no information for my noble friend on the other members of the team.
Lord HAWKE: My Lords, would the noble Lord say how much it would cost us per annum to go it alone?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I have not got that information, because this is a Community project.
Lord HANKEY: My Lords, would the noble Lord say whether it is feasible, if we cannot get agreement, for us to "go it alone" with everybody except the odd man out?—I think we all know who it is.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, we had hoped that agreement on siting might have been reached on Monday. In preparation for the Planning Council, the President had held consultations with all the Member States. We had
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given him an undertaking that we would not veto any site which had received the support of all our partners; but it would seem that not all Members were able to give a similar assurance.
Lord KINGS NORTON: My Lords, in view of the fact that there is likely to be a long period of uncertainty, could the noble Lord say whether special efforts will be made to keep the design team together?
Lord STRABOLGI: Certainly, my Lords. The Community Fusion Laboratories are currently arranging an extension of the JET design agreements which will enable the JET design team to remain together for a further six months. Noble Lords will be aware that the Council have agreed to the expenditure of four million units of account to enable the team to continue work, pending a decision on the JET site.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, could the noble Lord help us in one further respect? As this is obviously a matter of very great concern indeed for the energy policy of the whole of Western Europe and of the Free World, could he suggest to his right honourable friend that this matter could be taken up at Heads of Government level and without delay?
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sure that is a very useful suggestion which the noble Earl has made. I will certainly see that it is passed on to my right honourable friend.

NUCLEAR POWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
11.26 a.m.
Lord SHERFIELD Lord SHERFIELD rose to call attention to the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution on Nuclear Power and the Environment (Cmnd.6618); and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I should like, first, to say how grateful I am to so many noble Lords for coming to speak in, or listen to, this debate on the very edge of Christmas.
The Royal Commission on the Environment is composed of 16 people, eminent in a number of different fields. Under the chairmanship of Sir Brian Flowers, it took up the question of nuclear power and the environment, and published its findings on the 2nd November last as the Sixth Report of the Commission. The Report was signed by all 15 members of the Commission who took part in the inquiry. The noble Baroness, Lady White, is the only Member of this House on the Commission, and I am delighted that she is going to speak.
The report falls into three main parts, though they are not clearly separated. The first is descriptive, the second analytical and the third deals with a number of peripheral issues not directly connected with the environment, such as the dangers of sabotage and terrorism, and future energy patterns. It is clearly and lucidly written but, as your Lordships will have discovered, it needs very careful reading, because the issues are complex and highly controversial. The Commission gives full coverage to the wide variety of evidence it received, and one can find quotations in it to back up almost any point of view. For example, it has already been used—or misused—by the antinuclear lobbies in the United States to support their case.
The report also needs to be considered in relation to what has happened round the globe since it was published. In the United States, the Committee of Economic Development published in September a report on nuclear energy and national security by an authoritative sub-committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Franklin Lindsey. As the title indicates, it approaches the development of nuclear power from the point of view of proliferation of nuclear materials, but it moves over some of the same ground as the Royal Commission.
In Australia a Commission was set up under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Fox to make recommendations about the development of the Ranger Uranium Mine in Australia, and it published its first report on the 28th October. This lengthy document again covers much of the same ground as the Royal Commission, and takes broadly the same line.
Also, on 28th October, again in the United States, President Ford published a
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long statement on nuclear policy. This again approaches the subject from the point of view of proliferation and, among other things, recorded a decision that the United States should no longer regard reprocessing of used nuclear fuel to produce plutonium as a necessary and inevitable step in the nuclear fuel cycle. This statement was doubtless made partly in the light of a German decision to export reactor and fuel cycle technology to Brazil, and partly in response to earlier speeches on the subject by Mr. Jimmy Carter, who, incidentally, served as an engineer on a nuclear submarine. In these speeches, Mr. Carter took a cautious attitude to nuclear power development, but of course his attitude when in office remains to be disclosed. In the Presidential Election, on 2nd November, six Western States, following an earlier poll in California, voted by better than two to one against proposals to restrict nuclear power development, and showed a robust attitude to nuclear energy which had not been predicted.
In Sweden, the new Prime Minister led his Party into the Election on an antinuclear platform, but nevertheless, on his assumption of office, approved the commissioning of the latest Swedish nuclear power station. Almost every day we read reports of developments in nuclear policies and practice, especially in the United States and Europe, and they all serve to remind us that the Royal Commission's report deals with matters of international dimension, consideration and concern. We in this country cannot run in blinkers, but must take account of these and other important developments abroad. Finally, at home, I draw your Lordships' attention to the important gloss which Sir Brian Flowers himself put on his report in his talk to the British Nuclear Energy Society on 2nd December last.
Now, my Lords, for a few remarks on the Report itself. They must, inevitably, be brief and therefore rather general. I hope that subsequent speakers will sharpen some of them up. We should all be grateful for the expository passages of the report. They make some very hard subjects extremely clear for lay readers. The ingenious Dr. Mole at Harwell claims to have detected a number of errors in the paragraphs on radiobiology, but the Report is not a scientific

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paper and a few minor mistakes do not vitiate the excellent descriptions which are given.
In their conclusions on this part of the report, the Commission give a general endorsement of the present limits and standards imposed by international and national agencies, and disposes of a number of misconceptions and exaggerations about existing nuclear hazards. It is an advantage to have these ghosts authoritatively laid. With the organisation, international and national, for the control of health and safety, the regulation of nuclear power construction, reactor safety and waste management and disposal, the Commission have relatively little fault to find. They make some recommendations for altering and improving the existing machinery, and for setting up new bodies. These are, I think, matters for the Government, and I assume that they are under consideration.
Here I want to make only three comments. First, the present organisation is complicated on paper, but perhaps works quite well in practice. Secondly, the officials and scientists involved are probably more objective than the Commission sometimes gave them credit for. Thirdly, the nuclear industry is already more heavily supervised than any other, there is a limit to the number of competent supervisors available, and nuclear development should not be strangled in red tape. It emerges, therefore, that the Commission, after exhaustive examination, find relatively little to criticise about the development of the nuclear industry in all its aspects up to the present time. This is not surprising, because compared with other industries—and I need only mention recent experiences in the chemical industry, at home and abroad—the nuclear has an extraordinary record on safety; not a single fatal accident, no damage to the public, minimal effects on the environment. The whole issue is about the future and, if I may use a jargon word, in futurology a man or woman may hold his or her opinion to be as good as another's.
So far, therefore, it is confirmed that the technology of safety in the nuclear industry has kept pace with the development of the technologies of the reactor
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and fuel cycle. Will it continue to do so? That is the crucial question. The proponents of nuclear energy say that it will. The opponents say that it will not, or ask that the proposition should be proved 100 per cent. before further work is undertaken, which is impossible. So it becomes a question of judgment, and the factors which enter into this judgment are the essence of this debate.
I make the point here, which is also made in the Commission's report, that judgment in these matters tends to be clouded by emotion. Nuclear energy has, owing to its early history, always been an emotional issue, and it has become the whipping boy for those who are in revolt against the consequences of high technology, in general, who wish to stop or set limits to growth, and so on. The proponents of nuclear energy are not, in general, emotional, but sometimes appear to be a little rattled by the sharpness of the attack upon them.
What, then, are some of the factors which enter into this judgment? First, obviously, come the world prospects for energy supply. The Commission have a chapter on this which is not, I think, one of their strongest. The world, even on modest assumptions of growth, will run short of fossil fuels in an uncomfortably short time. What are the alternatives, what are they worth, how can they be developed? That we shall need them all seems certain. Only extremists think that we should do without nuclear power. The controversy is about how much and how fast it should be developed. It has many advantages. It is cheap. The latest figures from the CEGB for 1975–67 in respect of power stations commissioned in the last 12 years are as follows: nuclear 0½ 67p, coal-fired 0½ 97p. and oil-fired 1½ 09p, the figures including interest and depreciation charges appropriate to the year in question.
As coal and oil prices continue to rise as a result of the demands of miners or producer cartels, this price advantage should increase. Nuclear power is efficient especially so in the breeder mode; it is clean and compact. Its demands on transportation and labour are small in comparison with other fuels. The objections raised to it are the possible future hazards arising from the production of plutonium and the disposal of nuclear

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waste. The former concern the dangers of proliferation and diversion and are largely political. The latter is largely a technological problem about which most scientists and engineers are confident and many laymen are not. In weighing up the pros and cons we should have in mind that the expansion of alternative sources of energy—for example, coal—will also have sharp repercussions on the environment and that, by comparison, the volume of highly active waste arising is very small.
There is a question here of two time-scales: the time-scale on which fossil fuels will run out and the time-scale on which adequate alternative sources can be developed. The proponents of nuclear power say that time is getting short because of the long lead time required for development. The opponents say that there is no hurry. The latter go on to raise what has quickly become an ogre; namely, that the opportunities for sabotage, terrorism and blackmail would be vastly increased by an increase in the production of plutonium for fast reactors. The Royal Commission have a chapter on this. The Fox Commission have gone exhaustively into the possibilities. It is not a new theory but one which has been run over the years, particularly in the United States.
I confess that I find great difficulty with the idea. Even the most lunatic terrorist would not, I think, try to make a nuclear weapon or steal a nuclear fuel element; and if these targets were not available, such a terrorist would have an easier task with other targets—for example, oil rigs, pipelines and refineries. I find a similar difficulty with the argument that the development of fast reactors would pose a threat to civil liberties. Would not these be even more likely to be infringed by the strains imposed by growing shortages of energy? But of course all these possibilities are conceivable, they are strongly advanced and they must be taken into account.
I think the main danger lies in the misuse of weapons or materials by governments or governmental factions. It is this that lies at the heart of the problem of proliferation. The Commission could not deal with the military aspects of nuclear energy, and this inevitable omission masks the extent to which the world is already involved in the so-called plutonium
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economy. So in any event it will be essential to improve the system of national and international safeguards. I suggest that a valid distinction can be made between developing nuclear power at home under proper safeguards and exporting the technology of the fuel cycle and the reactor to other countries, particularly to those which have not signed the non-proliferation treaty.
For the Government the immediate task is to decide on the programme of nuclear development, especially how quickly to proceed with the processing of nuclear waste and the development of the fast reactor, after whatever further discussion is considered to be necessary and taking into account the resources which are available. Much uncertainty has been created by recent events and the great debate cannot he allowed to drag on too long. I would ask the Government, as soon as possible, to make the commitment of this country to nuclear power unequivocally clear, so that the expertise that we have built up can be retained; so that planning and development can proceed; so that we can honour our contracts with the Japanese; so that the existing co-operation with our European partners, who are pressing ahead with their programmes, can become closer and more effective; and, lastly, so that our lead in this field which we are, alas! in great danger of losing, can once more be regained. I hope that our debate today will provide some help to the Government in formulating policy.
I only add one point. The report of the Commission and, indeed, the other reports I have mentioned, give the Government every encouragement to delay, linger and wait, and it is the habit of governments not to require much encouragement in this direction. There is an observation attributed, as most such observations are, to Sir Winston Churchill:
"If you bring together in counsel"—
he is supposed to have said—
"the bravest soldier, the most gallant sailor, and the most intrepid airman, their decisions will be the sum of their fears."
That is not the attitude, I suggest, my Lords, in which we can afford to approach the question of energy in general and the problem of nuclear energy in particular. I beg to move for Papers.
11.48 a.m.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, it makes one humble indeed to listen to such a speech as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, who omitted to remind us that in fact he is an expert in this field. It has become something of a Parliamentary cliché to say that the noble Lord has performed a valuable service in initiating this debate but I think I ought to say that the noble Lord has done rather more than that. He has in fact achieved the distinction of fielding for the debate today a formidable team—I should say present company excepted—which serves to demonstrate the value of this House. I doubt very much whether it would be possible to initiate a debate of this kind in any other forum in this country. I have to say that I feel honoured to play even a small and, I can assure your Lordships, a very modest part in it.
The noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, has also served a very useful purpose in the very broad sweep he has taken by reminding us of all the other reports which we should have read, although I suspect that in many cases we probably have not done so. However, the important point is that we must not view this matter through the eyes of "Little Englanders". We must at least take a European view of the problem. In so doing, let us remember that our situation is at least temporarily rather different from that of our EEC partners, in that from 1980 onwards we may have a 30-year period of energy independence. This does not apply to any of the other members of the European Economic Community.
Amid the galaxy of technical talent which is on the list of speakers this afternoon, it behoves those of us who are less well qualified to make only brief remarks and then to try to listen and learn from what the others tell us. I found that in preparing for this debate I was tempted to try to cover all the issues which I felt ought to be covered, but on this last day of term your Lordships will no doubt be relieved to know that I intend to resist the temptation to do anything of the kind and I hope to make a few relatively short comments because I believe that one of the things this House ought to be able to do, as the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield,
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has already stated, is to express some of these highly complicated technical issues in terms which become meaningful to the ordinary lay members of the public.
Indeed, the Flowers Report itself has performed a useful service by taking a cool and authoritative view of a subject which has tended, and still tends, to he rather over emotive and expressed in rather over-emotive terms. As the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, has said, this report has been criticised on a number of technical grounds. That is probably good. I believe most people feel that if they are criticised on either side of an argument it probably means that they have the answer somewhere near the right level in between. But it has also been criticised for possibly fudging "some of the issues in an attempt —and it has proved to be a successful attempt—to arrive at an agreed conclusion which all the members of the Commission were able to sign. At the very least that in itself performs the useful function of trying to seek a consensus—a middle road —through all these very difficult problems rather than trying simply to identify the polarised disagreements which are inevitable in studying a problem of this kind.
However, it seems to me that there are certain fairly simple conclusions that we can draw from it. It is perfectly clear that the continued development of nuclear power creates special risks and these risks are bound to increase with the development of fast breeder reactors. In addition to the environmental risk, the report rightly calls attention to the questions of security which, again repeating the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, have to be answered.
It is worth emphasising again the point which has already been made and which I am sure will be made again this afternoon, that scientists have behaved with commendable responsibility throughout the development of this very difficult technology. They have foreseen and appreciated the risks to the extent that they have an unblemished record in taking the precautions which have prevented serious accidents. I hope that the discussion we shall have today will succeed in extracting some of the issues from the labyrinth of technical argument in which they can so easily get lost, so that we may sufficiently clarify the issues that we can recognise the political choices which are involved in deciding on this aspect at least of energy policy.

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The Commission rightly extended its terms of reference to what at first sight might appear to have had nothing to do with environmental pollution. They addressed themselves to the very difficult question of the identification of the need for power, and this is perhaps the single most difficult area in which we are involved. There is a habit of suggesting that the world in general and this country in particular is inevitably going to increase its need for power at 3 per cent. compound interest; and if we extrapolate that kind of a curve, after a few years the energy demands it implies are alarming indeed. However, I think the first thing to be said about that is that for the first time this 3 per cent. growth rate faltered as a result of the price rises which took place following the activities of the OPEC cartel in 1973—or principally as a result of that. It has had unfortunate consequences to which our attention was drawn only the other day. It has upset all the calculations of the Central Electricity Generating Board and it has led to a crisis in the generator manufacturing industry. But even if one claims that that is a special situation which is not likely to recur, I think it is at least worth postulating the possibility that power demand can arrive at a position of saturation where the rate of increase can level off.
We in this country are already using more power per head of the population than the Germans are to produce a higher output, which indicates that if we wish to—and I shall return to this subject in a moment—there is something we can do about it. Some people point out the parallel between power consumption and the standard of living. I should have thought that that was a dangerous argument in so far as there is no inevitable connection between these two figures: even if there is, as it happens, a connection, it may be in the same way as there may be a connection between the number of people emigrating to Australia and the incidence of rabies in Norway. There may be a slightly more causative connection than that, but I do not think it is necessarily a causative connection.
The figures for the United States of America are also cited, but there again we have to bear in mind that a very large amount of the power used in the United States is used for transportation over a
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much bigger area than ours. I would suggest that the experience we recently had as a result of the price rise indicates that in fact we have the power (if we care to exercise it) to control or modify the rate at which power demand is increasing; and this is really a very important point.
The reason why this question of energy forecasting is so important is of course the long lead times in which we are involved in the energy industry. Even to bring in a new coalfield takes something like five years. Building a conventional power station is on the same kind of time-scale and we know very well that the development of a fast breeder reactor must take something like 20 years, so it is understandable that industries such as the Central Electricity Generating Board inevitably are trying to indulge in what the noble Lord has very properly called "futurology". It is something which unfortunately we have to do, and there is a great deal of argument as to what kind of answers we produce; and I have tried to indicate some of the reasons why these answers can diverge so much. We have somehow got to be sure that we can arrange to produce the power we are going to need at the time we are going to need it, and given these long lead times we have to make certain assumptions about what our power needs are going to be.
If we look ahead something like 50 years—and here we are indulging in the mort dangerous sort of futurology —I think we must assume that energy produced from nuclear fusion is going to be the solution. This is free from pollution and the dangers that the noble Lord has referred to and which are referred to in the report, which is the result of fission reactors. Furthermore, the power source is water, of which we have plenty. My information, such as it is, is that most scientists now believe that nuclear fusion will be possible, and I do not think that is in any way vitiated by the little exchange we had earlier on this morning. The fact is that we cannot prove it will be possible; it remains something of an act of faith. But I hope we shall be told by those who know more about this than I do that this is ultimately going to be possible, and that this ultimately will he the solution we are seeking to the energy problems of the world. I mention this principally to

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indicate that any kind of fission technology is essentially a stop-gap to bridge the awkward period of 50 years or thereabouts until such time as we get to the fusion age.
My Lords, in spite of that, or perhaps because of that, one can see a number of reasons why we should press ahead with nuclear power. As the noble Lord has already said, the most compelling reason is that it is already substantially cheaper than what one might call the conventional power sources. The existing nuclear reactors are producing power at something of the order of two-thirds the cost of thermal, fossil fuel-burning stations and, of course, nuclear reactors are much less vulnerable in the long run to the effects of inflation, although there has been alarming inflation in the costs of building the stations.
Secondly, this is a country which increasingly is going to have to live in a world where it earns its living with high technology exports. One would hope that this was perhaps a proper field for us to indulge in, but the record has not been terribly encouraging so far. Most of the power stations being exported round the world now are American designed pressurised water reactors and boiling water reactors, whereas we have gone through the gas-cooled route. That has not proved to be an attractive export proposition. Furthermore, a couple of other essays by this country into the world of high technology, such as both the Comet and the Concorde, have not been howling commercial successes, to put it mildly, magnificent technical achievement though they may be. Another reason for going into nuclear technology is that this will eventually save our import bill when we move again out of our energy independence. It will ensure our political freedom from interference by supplier of fuel, although here it is worth remembering that uranium is certainly a finite resource which could be subjected to just the same kind of cartel operations as has happened to the oil products.
Furthermore, one believes that in the long run, oil and coal should properly be regarded as sources of chemicals rather than being burned underneath boilers, polluting the atmosphere, in order to produce fuel. There are additional advantages, and the noble Lord once
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again very properly referred to these. There are advantages in terms of environmentalism, of going the nuclear route. There exists a book, published in the United States, of which so far I have been unable to get a copy. It is called, The Danger of Not Going Nuclear. I understand that this book points out that some of the environmental impact of the alternative to nuclear power is in fact more damaging to the environment than is nuclear power itself. But we have to face the fact that the existing fission reactors are profligate users of uranium. If we are to have an economy using uranium, there is going to be a great temptation to go to the fast breeder reactors which use uranium something like 70 to 100 times more efficiently than the ordinary fission reactor as we know it.
My Lords, the other point which comes through very clearly in this report is that the whole argument about safety is largely a statistical argument. I suspect I am not alone among noble Lords in very rapidly acquiring a glazed look when statistics begin to be bought in. But the point was made very simply and effectively by Dr. Teller recently in a lecture at the American Embassy. He quoted the Rasmussen Report in the United States which said that the danger from a major nuclear accident or, indeed, a minor nuclear accident, could be roughly considered to be equivalent to the dangers from a falling meteorite. If a large meteorite happened to fall on a city like New York, there is no doubt it would do a great deal of damage. I cannot recall an incident of this kind having taken place in recent years. There may have been minor incidents; I would not know. Dr. Teller went on to say that the statement had been attacked and analysed by all the appropriate authorities in the United States, and they have been unable to blow down this assertion. It struck me as a telling expression which I could find reasonably easy to understand.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, would the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, not agree that we have not got a large industry adding to the number of meteorites?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, because I was

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just coming to that very point. If you begin to erode the basis of your nuclear calculations and you multiply by 100 the possibilities of proliferating stations and if, of course, those stations are of a nature which are inherently more dangerous by another factor, you are clearly spreading the risks. I am not sufficient of a statistician to know where that leads us.
My Lords, the other question we ought to raise if we are talking about the fast breeder reactor is whether this is a sensible way in fact to spend that amount of money, £500 million for example. If we spent such a figure on 200,000 houses and saved, perhaps, two kilowatts per house, we could end up in fact by having saved the need for more power than the fast breeder reactor will generate. I would have preferred to have seen our efforts directed to reducing the demand for energy rather than going too quickly into attempts to increase the supply. I believe it is technically easier and more likely to produce quick results, and more certain that these results will continue. I would go further, and say that by contributing to the development of some of the non-conventional sources of supply, these could really be regarded—because they will be small contributions in small packets—as additions to the effort to reduce the demand. I suspect that a really serious campaign in this direction would be more fruitful more quickly than rushing into fast breeder developments.
However, the fact is that this kind of a policy does not show any sign of occurring. Therefore, one has reluctantly to accept that we shall have to go on supplying energy for the kind of increasing demand which has been the pattern heretofore. Given these circumstances, we have no option but to continue a steady, but I hope not headlong, development of the kind of technology we are engaged on at present. What I feel the Flowers Report has indicated to us is that those who wish to go on with this kind of technology clearly have an obligation to establish the need and the safety of what they are going to do. If we put the question that way round, the Flowers Report has performed a very useful service indeed.
12.10 p.m.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord
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Sherfield, for giving us the opportunity of debating this matter today, even though I shall have to disagree with some of his conclusions. I can at least agree with him that the whole topic of nuclear energy excites passionate emotions, not only on the side of the antinuclear lobby; equally some of the proponents tend to use extravagant language. The noble Lord himself spoke of persons who say that we can do without nuclear power as being extremists. I do not accept that; I think there is a perfectly respectable case to be made out for not having any nuclear power whatsoever, although it is not a case that I am intending to develop today. To use that kind of language in respect of persons who have perfectly respectable arguments is not going to assist us in our debate. Apart from that, I thought the noble Lord made a very valuable contribution to the debate which we shall be having from now on concerning the Flowers Report and its recommendations.
I would begin by paying a tribute to Sir Brian and his colleagues for the very valuable contribution they have made to this subject. I think their report at least provides us with some of the materials upon which to base judgments concerning this important question of the long-term dependence of the United Kingdom on nuclear energy for its energy supplies, and on the fast reactor in particular. My Lords, the Royal Commission's report does not pretend to examine thoroughly some of the matters which were outside the Commission's terms of reference and which may exercise a critical influence on the decisions, including such matters as the risks and possible consequences of reactor accidents, safeguards against diversion of nuclear materials into weapon-making, nuclear theft and sabotage and the possible implications of the plutonium economy for civil liberties, which the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, tended to dismiss, but which I shall examine in some detail later on.
Neither did the report of the Royal Commission examine a wide enough spread of energy strategies to cover all the possible nuclear options. Some of these matters have been dealt with in greater detail in the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry, which Sir Brian has suggested should be read in conjunction with his own report. I would point out that neither Sir Brian nor Chief Justice

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Fox have attempted to substitute themselves for the democratic process. What we have to do now, I suggest, armed with these reports, is to find ways of conveying the information that they contain to the people as a whole and creating opportunities for extensive discussion. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, that it is time we brought this great debate to an end; I think it is only just beginning and our debate here today is part of that process.
Lord SHERFIELD: My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive me, I did not say that it was time it was brought to an end. I said it should not go on too long.
Lord AVEBURY: Well, my Lords, these are nuances. I got the impression from the noble Lord's speech that he did not think we had very much more to say on this subject. But if he listens to the rest of what I have to say and agrees with the time-scale I am proposing for the great debate, then I shall be only too delighted. Sir Brian himself argued that we have a decade before we are irretievably committed to nuclear power as a major component of our electricity supply. There is, therefore, in my submission, plenty of scope for the process, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, would agree with that. There is also time for the demonstration beyond reasonable doubt, which Sir Brian said is required, that a method exists for the safe isolation of radioactive wastes for the indefinite future, a question which has arisen in the last few weeks in connection with the proposed extension of the Windscale new processing plant. These two questions are linked, in that it is only through public discussion that doubts on these matters can be dispelled. I must say frankly that I do not think British Nuclear Fuels have assisted their own case by concealing the leak of radioactive material which took place while their planning application was under consideration.
Lord ZUCKERMAN: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord. Is he correct in saying that British Nuclear Fuels denied the information?
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, the fact is that the leak took place some time
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ago; the trade unions had no knowledge of it, although it is arguable that they should have been notified under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Lord ZUCKERMAN: My Lords, may I again interrupt the noble Lord, to inform him and your Lordships' House that a statement has been issued showing that the facts were released straight away, and to the trade union individuals concerned.
Lord AVEBURY: Well, my Lords, I read a statement, which was made by one of the trade unionists locally, who said that in his opinion it was not necessary for the workers to be notified. Perhaps there are conflicts of evidence on this which we can resolve on some other occasion. I think all I need to say is that the Cumbria County Council, who were responsible for granting this planning application, appeared to be unaware of what had taken place. We understand from the papers this morning that the Secretary of State for the Environment is about to call in that application and initiate what I understand to be some form of extra-statutory inquiry about it. I think it is most unfortunate, if this decision really has been taken, that it could not have been announced in another place yesterday, so that not only could there have been an adequate opportunity for honourable Members to put questions when there was a full attendance on a three-line whip, but also the information would then have been available to us from the start of today's debate.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord, to save him from perhaps going on at some length about this, to tell him that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is still hopeful that he may be able to make a Statement before Christmas.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, I know, but if he was going to make a Statement why could not he have made it in another place yesterday afternoon, when everybody was there and could have put questions to him. The information in the Statement could then have been available to your Lordships so that we could have discussed it thoroughly when he had the opportunity. If the Secretary of State is going to make the Statement this afternoon,

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it is too late so far as we are concerned. I am going to assume that the Statement will be made that the application is going to be called in and that this extrastatutory inquiry is going to be instituted by the Secretary of State.
We on these Benches welcome the calling in of the application, but we believe that it is of such major importance that the planning inquiry commission procedure of Section 47 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 should be invoked. The criteria under Section 48 of that Act are, first, that the application has been called in, as this one has; secondly, that there are considerations of national or regional importance which are relevant and can be determined only by means of special inquiry. Nobody, I think, would deny that there are aspects of this application which are of national and indeed international importance.
There are some doubts, according to an article in The Times, as to whether the Non-Proliferation Treaty allows us to reprocess Japanese fuel which is of American origin. Although the Americans have graciously allowed one shipment of Japanese spent fuel elements to be taken to Windscale, which was due there on 26th December, any future deliveries under the terms of the contract—which was supposed to earn us £500 million and which was used as the justification for the extension of Windscale—are suspended pending clarification of the interpretation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So we are dealing with a matter of not only national but international importance. I am not altogether sure that these are matters which the Planning Committee of the Cumbria County Council was competent to resolve.
Thirdly, the criterion is that the technical or scientific aspect of the proposed development is so unfamiliar in character as to jeopardise proper determination about a special inquiry. The technology of reprocessing high burn-up fuels has never been successfully applied on a commercial scale. There is an article in this month's Scientific American which says:
"Nineteen years after the first American nuclear power station went into service at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, the US still has no commercial facility licensed to recover plutonium and unburned uranium 235 from the spent fuel of nuclear power reactors."
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One such plant which had been licensed was forced to close down permanently because of insuperable technical difficulties in its operation, and another one costing 500 million dollars, which was completed a year ago, is still awaiting a licence to operate. This may have something to do with the recent announcement by the United States authorities mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, that the United States no longer regards reprocessing as an inevitable part of the fuel cycle Obviously, if they are not capable of carrying it out themselves, it would suit them to prevent anyone else from doing so.
To avoid the kind of commercial and technical disaster in the United Kingdom to which I have referred from American experience, I think we should apply the planning inquiry commission procedure not only to the Windscale application but to every single major step forward in nuclear technology. If as a result of using that procedure there are delays, then it would still be a great deal cheaper than writing off plant costing upwards of half a billion dollars.
The case for accelerating the development of nuclear power rests on two assumptions which have been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield. The first is the cost of nuclear electricity being lower than the cost of electricity generated from burning fossil fuels, as indeed it has been, as he pointed out, with the accounting conventions that have been applied. The CEGB pays a levy to the Atomic Energy Authority of · 007p a unit of nuclear electricity, an amount which was fixed as long ago as 1967 and which has no built-in escalation to take account of the fall in the value of the pound. I do not know by how much the levy would have to be raised in order to cover the full cost of the reactor development programme. Perhaps the noble Baroness could try to give us that information when she speaks later on. It is at least possible that the relative economics of nuclear and conventional electricity would be radically changed if the full costs of the reactor development programme had to be recovered by a levy on the consumers of electricity. Now that the advanced gas-cooled reactors are being commissioned, I suggest quite seriously that those levy arrangements be reviewed with a view to having the full cost recovered.

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The second assumption mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, is that electricity demand will grow at some arbitrary rate over the next 50 years. Even if one postulates only a very small percentage growth rate, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, pointed out, if one compounds it over such a long period as half a century it gives one a most impressive rise in generating capacity, and you then find that even on the most optimistic projections of oil, coal, and gas the only way of producing that electricity is nuclear; and with the likely shortages also of uranium you must go then to fast reactors.
The trouble with these imaginary 50 year projections is that very soon the deductions which arc made from them assume the importance of Holy Writ. Sir John Hill, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, for whom I have the highest regard, has committed himself to estimates which show that the installed generating capacity will reach 555 gigawatts by the year 2030. Since growth on that scale throughout the whole of the industralised world would obviously not be feasible without fast reactors, the inevitability of the fast reactor becomes unquestionable. For Sir John Hill it is not a case of if; it is a question of when.
Up to the year 2000 these projections of the Atomic Energy Authority were corroborated by the estimates given to the Royal Commission by the Department of Energy. The Royal Commission, on the basis of different assumptions regarding market penetration of electricity, offered a scenario in which the installed capacity by the year 2025 is only one-third as much as in the official version. That would still give a very substantial nuclear component. It would give you 80 gigawatts compared with between 304 and 426 in the AEA scenario.
If we start to argue the rival merits of the two sets of figures, however, we are overlooking this questionable feature that they both have in common, that a 2 per cent. growth per annum in primary electricity consumption will take place over this very long period. The errors which result from extrapolating previous growth rates even over a period as short as six years have been absolutely staggering, as the CEGB has found. If one looks at the CPRS Study published last week, it
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shows how disastrous these errors have been from the point of view of the wretched suppliers. On page 3 it says that orders for turbo-generators have varied from a peak of 16.3 gigawatts in 1964 down to zero in the last three years. It is absolutely impossible to carry on any kind of business, I would suggest, with fluctuations as large as that. While I do not go all the way with the CPRS in their recommendations, I suggest that we should seriously consider in 1977 placing one order for a twin 660 megawatt station, because if one looks at the longer term the level of orders would have to be larger than 1,320 megawatt a year if one is simply going to replace existing plant as it reaches the end of its useful life.
The CEGB in its accounting assumptions suggests that the useful life of generating plant is 30 years, so that something slightly over 2,000 megawatts a year should be ordered even if there is no growth at all in simultaneous maximum demand. But if that is the order of magnitude of the need, then we certainly should not be thinking of taking the billion pound gamble of CFRI, and the size of the thermonuclear programme would be the minimum consistent with retaining a nuclear reactor design capability. I believe that this is by no means an impossible scenario, as we can see by looking at the last few years. Since 1973 the consumption of primary fuels has in fact declined, but simultaneous maximum demand is not a quantity which is given. It can be varied, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, has pointed out, within limits, by Government policies such as insulation standards, the cost yardsticks for local authority housing, or the degree of self-financing that is required of the nationalised industries. So that simultaneous maximum demand is a dependent variable and not an independent one as it is so frequently treated by the forecasters. Even if one looks at the Department of Energy's seven different scenarios given in the discussion document, Energy R & D in the United Kingdom, while recognising that external factors may influence the cost of primary fuels, and hence of electricity, these scenarios make energy consumption very largely a function of gross domestic product, which comes to the same thing as saying that they are hardly influenced at all by variations in our domestic policies.

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My good friend Dr. Walter Marshall, the chief scientist of the Department of Energy, offered to recalculate these projections to incorporate some normative factors which I suggested to the Royal Society of Art Symposium on 19th June this year. I suggested taking his low growth scenario but with the energy conservation effects taken from the high energy cost model, and the coal and renewable resources contribution taken from the non-nuclear model. I still think it would be useful if this particular scenario were to be examined, as Dr. Marshall had promised, and the figures made publicly available. Indeed, anybody reading the document is invited to suggest possible alternatives which, the Department say, they will examine.
I suggest that a large nuclear programme and the development of fast reactors is unnecessary in the sense that, if we want to do so, we can plan for a much lower energy future. Nobody has actually asked people if they want continued economic growth or, if so, what kinds of growth they would prefer. It is certainly by no means obvious to me that people would be happier if much large quantities of energy were available to them. But if they were disposed to think, as they are encouraged to do by big business, trade unions, politicians and the media, that a policy of maximising economic growth is desirable, I think they would still require to be satisfied that undesirable side-effects of growth can be properly dealt with.
They might not be prepared to agree with Professor Beckerman that when any dis-benefits of growth appear to be intolerable to the community, the problem is simply one of misallocation of resources; the alternative consideration which people might bear in mind is whether the potential risks of a large nuclear programme are such that they cannot be corrected simply by a mere reallocation of resources.
Earlier this year, when we were discussing the Atomic Energy Authority (Special Constables) Bill, we tried to point out some of the implications fo civil liberties of the measures that might have to be taken against nuclear theft and sabotage, which the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, curtly dismissed. These considerations were also at the time brushed aside by the Government. However, they have now been given quite powerful reinforcement
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by the Sir Brian Flowers Commission and by the Fox Report.
What is the threat? There is the threat of sabotage of nuclear installations leading to substantial damage and release of radioactivity, and there is the threat of the theft of plutonium and its use by criminals or terrorists in explosive devices. The Flowers Report discusses sabotage without trying to assess the vulnerability of nuclear plant, and as the Commission admit that they do not know the details of the security arrangements which have been made or are in operation, the risk must be a matter of conjecture. The public can never be given this information because it would make life easier for the terrorists and therefore we must take it on trust that the precautions are satisfactory. However, the Fox Report says:
"It seems doubtful whether, as the number of facilities increases, it will be possible to provide sufficient defences to render every installation safe against attack by even small numbers of well-armed trained men."
If it is asked, as Lord Sherfield asked, why the terrorists should pick on nuclear targets rather than, say, a chemical plant or an oil rig the answer is that in addition to causing damage amounting to tens of millions of pounds, an attack on a nuclear facility would be treated as a far more spectacular coup by the public at large and the media, which is what terrorism is all about. Another answer, of course, is that we do not as yet consider it necessary to place armed guards on chemical plants.
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord is he wants to encourage, and give new ideas to, terrorists?
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, I am doing no more than using the information that is provided in the Flowers and Fox Reports, and if the noble Lord will look at those reports he will find that the discussion which I am suggesting we should have is largely based on the material which is available in published form.
With regard to the theft of plutonium, the Flowers Reports says that if we have to deal with the possibility of groups consisting of about a dozen terrorists, helped by insiders
"… the security arrangements required would be extensive and their implications for society should be considered."

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Fox believes that an attacking force consisting of as few as three well-armed trained men would be difficult to thwart. These are not my opinions; they are taken from the reports. It goes on to say that if such a group managed to steal a few kilogrames of reactor grade plutonium, they would be able to construct a bomb with the yield of perhaps 100 tons of TNT which could be transported in a small vehicle. Fox goes a little further and says that terrorists could use reactor grade plotonium to make a bomb with good prospects of giving a yield of several hundred tons of TNT, and he goes on to point out that if there is some uncertainty over the yield. that would be of very little concern to the terrorist.
If the authorities are convinced that such a device exists with the potential of killing a few thousand people—somewhere between 2,000 and 50,000 according to Willrich and Taylor—in a densely crowded city centre where immense property damage would occur as well, the threats which were made by the terrorists would have to be considered very seriously. The Flowers Report says:
"We are by no means convinced that the British Government have realised the full implications of this issue."
To begin with, the authorities would have to monitor employees in plants where fissile materials are held and members of the public with whom they were or might be in contact as well as members of organisations thought to be of a subversive nature. The Flowers Report regards the use of informers, infiltrators, wire-tapping, checks on bank accounts and the opening of mail as highly likely, indeed inevitable, to catch members or suspected members of extremist or terrorist groups, and if there is supposed to be a large number of individuals or factions prepared to use plutonium, widespread surveillance, he says, could scarcely be avoided. Fox says that witnesses expressed concern that measures designed to minimise the chances of the diversion of plutonium might constitute an infringement of civil rights.
It would be necessary, for instance, to investigate the personal attitudes of employees and applicants for jobs. Some suggested that if the use and transport of plutonium became a regular feature of the nuclear industry,
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"the degree of investigation and surveillance would be unacceptable in a democratic society".
Sir Brian, in his lecture to the British Nuclear Energy Society on 2nd December, said:
"On the issue of the possible effects of illicit activities directed towards the nuclear programme and the threat to civil liberties of security arrangements, the Royal Commission was given very little help by official bodies".
One suspects that this may be because the Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Authority have not applied their minds to this problem. It has been discussed in some depth, however, by Robin Grove-White of CPRE and Dr. Michael Flood of Friends of the Earth in their paper Nuclear Prospects, A Comment On The Individual, The State And Nuclear Power. Sir Brian said of that document that it was a little dramatic for his taste but that it deserved to be studied as it was the best we had to go on at present.
We are here dealing with a very dramatic threat and it is therefore hard to avoid being dramatic in its treatment. The possibility of nuclear malevolence has to be taken seriously, and the Government in some ways take it seriously, otherwise, as I have said, they would not have taken powers to arm 400 special constables in the AEA. But having taken every possible precaution against the diversion of nuclear materials, we then have to consider what would be the appropriate response if, nevertheless, criminals succeeded in penetrating the defences or if it is thought possible that they may have penetrated the defences. The consequences of the malevolent use of plutonium are so serious and devastating that every possible means of recovery of the material would be justifiable, including for example powers of general search without a warrant.
However, as it is impossible to predict in advance when such an incident might occur, the enabling legislation to conduct such general searches would have to be passed in normal times, and as Flood and Grove-White point out, the public would have to be made aware of the purposes for which such a Bill was intended in the debates on it; when the powers came to be invoked it would be profoundly alarming to public opinion, and even if the threat turned out to be a false one, it might subsequently generate a demand for even tighter security measures. It might be argued that general search powers

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should be a feature of the normal law so that there would be no interval for the obtaining of Parliamentary approval; if the authorities had reasonable, or indeed any, grounds for believing that members of a certain organisation had stolen a quantity of plutonium, it is hard to imagine that the Judges' Rules would be strictly followed in questioning the members of the suspected organisation.
Lord HANKEY: My Lords, might we invite the noble Lord to explain his thoughts a little? Is he seriously suggesting that it is wrong for a democracy to defend itself against the people who want to destroy it?
Lord AVEBURY: Certainly not. I am explaining that much stronger measures would have to be taken by society to defend itself against the possibility of illicit use of plutonium than we should like to contemplate in a democratic society, and it is the development of nuclear power, particularly the reliance on plutonium, that would cause these security measures to become necessary. I was about to say that we used forms of torture in Northern Ireland against suspected terrorists, and when we had an inquiry into those circumstances a former Lord Chief Justice and a very distinguished Parliamentarian declared the procedures adopted to he justified. But even if one disagreed with that, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, one can understand the concern of the forces of law and order—and I think that this is an answer to the noble Lord—whose interest it was to protect the ordinary citizens of Northern Ireland against the activities of these terrorists who were killing and maiming so many of their fellow citizens. But how much stronger would the argument of the former Lord Chief Justice and that distinguished Parliamentarian have been if, instead of being armed with a few kilogrammes of gelignite, those concerned had come into possession of a few kilogrammes of plutonium?
My Lords, I am afraid that I have spoken for too long, but that is partly because I have been interrupted. In conclusion, how are we to come to grips with issues like these which are so far outside the boundaries of the Department
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of Energy'? Flowers strongly supports the idea of a high-level, independent body to provide advice on energy strategy, taking account of economic, social, technical and environmental considerations; a body for which we on these Benches have argued in numerous debates over recent years—and we are not alone in that. We understand that the Secretary of State has been moving in this direction, too, but in his scheme the advisory body would be dominated by managers and union leaders from within the energy industries with a token consumer and perhaps even a token conservationist. We would say that such a composition would not promote the "freedom and originality of thought", the
"independence from institutional pressures and from the need to justify existing arrangements and policies"
which Sir Brian rightly says ought to be the aim. If war is too dangerous to be left to the Generals, energy policy is too important to be left to the British Nuclear Forum.
Sir Brian has identified the strength of the vested interests and the pressures which make it impossible to say that the world need not be dependent on nuclear power beyond the end of this century. We are being driven inexorably towards confirming the Faustian bargain of plentiful energy supplies in exchange for the commitment to a material which could be used ultimately to transform and even destroy society. I hope that this debate today will help to slow down and halt that trend.
12.45 p.m.
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, as one of the very few lay Members on the list of speakers in the debate I should probably not have had the temerity to intervene had I not had the benefit of two and a half years' education as a Member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Most of the noble Lords who have indicated that they wish to take part have a distinguished record in science or in engineering, or even in both, and I understand that even the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham has a scientific background. We have with us more particularly the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, who was such a notable pioneer in the civil use of nuclear energy in this country,

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admittedly some years ago in the period of bright confident morning which I doubt will ever recur.
As a member of the Royal Commission I should like to pay my own tribute to the chairman, Sir Brian Flowers, to whom I think all of us who worked with him would acknowledge much of the merit of the sixth Report which we are debating is due. His own knowledge of the subject and his continuing membership of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority gave him an unrivalled advantage in directing our inquiries. The widespread, indeed world-wide interest, which the report has commanded has, as he himself publicly admitted, set him at odds with certain of his colleagues. Since the report has appeared I myself have been astonished at how unscientific the reactions of scientists can be. They are indeed all too human. So we have witnessed in the correspondence columns of The Times and elsewhere a very sharp polorisation between what in shorthand we may call the nuclear lobby and the rest. I hope that one of the aims of the debate today will be to reach a better understanding between the two sides.
The Royal Commission itself tried very hard indeed to take an objective view, siding neither with the more extreme environmentalists who are basically I think in revolt against modern technological society as a whole, and who find nuclear proliferation, military or civil, their most rewarding target, nor with those who because their life's work has been involved with the nuclear programme feel compelled to defend it at all costs, too often regardless of the misgivings of people who may be quite as sincere, and even possibly as intelligent, as they are, but who pose long-term difficult questions which demand an answer.
One cannot emphasise too much—the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, who introduced the debate drew attention to this—that the Royal Commission was particularly concerned with the long-term aspects of the nuclear programme; much more concerned with that than with the present position, or with what may happen even in the next decade. As we have said more than once in our report, we are trying to look ahead at what could happen in, say, 50 years from now, and most of what we say has to be considered in that
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context. That does not mean of course that we did not pay attention to what is the current situation, and we commented on it as seemed required; for example, our criticism of the standard of housekeeping to be observed at Windscale at the time of a visit which took place in 1974.
But we were equally at pains to emphasise that even such deficiencies must be kept in perspective, and that it helped no one if the Press ran scare stories over incidents which had done, or were likely to do, very little actual damage. I should like to get Windscale out of the way early in my speech because I should expect that the noble Baroness who is to reply for the Government will probably wish to refer to it. The Royal Commission considered the proposals for the reprocessing of nuclear fuel at Windscale and came to the conclusion that on balance if such reprocessing was to take place, it was better that it should take place in as few areas as possible and at installations such as Windscale where, by and large at least, they know what they are doing and are geared to stringent precautions. Since then we have been overtaken by events, and as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned, the United States, and now I think France, are themselves coming into the field and putting forward claims to a copyright, as it were, in nuclear fuel supplied originally by themselves.
We were more concerned, frankly, about the possible dangers involved in the transportation over vast distances of such materials, and we were not able to accept what we took to be the view of the Secretary of State for Energy that the return to the country of origin of such materials was a desirable option. Of course, as a Royal Commission we were not in any way involved with the subsequent controversy which arose over the planning application, but I would join cordially with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, in hoping that my noble friend will be able to say something about this before the end of this debate, because I think it will be grossly discourteous to this House if she does not. The Secretary of State has indicated that he is going to say something before Christmas, which gives only the possibility of one more Parliamentary day in the other place; and if he is going to say something, then I think we ought to be told about it.

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This is not the occasion for going into the whole question of the planing procedures in this country, but I must emphasise my own view that it is not appropriate, in a situation such as Windscale, for a final decision to be taken by the county council, although obviously their views are very important; and I would very much hope that the Department of the Environment will seize this nettle and apply their minds to a definition of categories of installations which are really too hazardous or too important to he subject to the ordinary planning procedures. This definition should enable us to take action at a much earlier stage than can at present he clone, when one has to wait to see whether or not the Secretary of State will call in the planning application and he can then take his time in deciding whether to set up a special inquiry. I feel that we have a very considerable hiatus in our planning arrangements in this country in dealing with nuclear installations, in particular, or with other major hazardous establishments, such as some of the great chemical works. I cannot believe that it is beyond the wits of the Department to find a more satisfactory way of dealing with such situations. I have considerable sympathy with the management and the workers at BNFL, who have been kept on tenterhooks for a considerable time now and who have to look forward to another period of uncertainty as to whether or not they can go ahead with the project which they wish to embark upon.
As to the way in which the information was handled about the silo leakage, on which the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, I suspect, will wish to enlighten us, frankly I think it was done in the most fumbling way imaginable, whatever the details may have been, and showed an insensitivity of judgment as to how the public, not to mention the Minister responsible, would react. This is the gravamen of much of the implied criticism in the Report of the Royal Commission: that we felt that the attitude of those concerned with the administration of our nuclear endeavours in this country was simply not geared to the quite understandable apprehensions of the general public. I found this the most disappointing aspect of our investigations; and, my Lords, one does not have to he a nuclear physicist to judge the quality and attitude
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of mind of some of those who are in charge of our nuclear activities.
Those of your Lordships who have read our report must have observed the expressions of disquiet to be found on so many of its pages. These criticisms were clothed in the most restrained language. The Royal Commission was not, by temperament or training, an alarmist body—quite the contrary—and we all recognised and paid tribute to the dedicated work of those in charge of so much of our nuclear development. But at the same time some of us, at least, were often depressed by what we felt was the blinkered outlook which could preclude adequate consideration of matters not directly in the line of vision. We were depressed by a certain rigidity of mind, and in some cases by what I have called the impenetrable complacency of those in high places. A Micawberish attitude does not go well with a substance as potentially risky as plutonium.
Perhaps I may illustrate my point by reference to a few quotations from the Report. For example, in our discussion of the need to safeguard plutonium from possible illegal diversion, we were obliged to conclude:
"We are by no means convinced that the British government has realised the full implications of this issue".
This was after we had received a bromide from the Cabinet Office and after our chairman and two of our members had discussed the matter confidentially at the highest level—and nothing that Sir John Hill, chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, has since written in The Times has caused me nor, I would suppose, my fellow Commissioners to change our view. Bland assertions are the least convincing of all, and they usually indicate that the respondent has not adequately understood the question.
I have been concerned, also, to have seen a letter—a very good letter; a very persuasive letter—from the Prime Minister to one of his constituents, who sent it to me. I quote one paragraph:
"On the questions of security against sabotage and acts of terrorism, the Government have recently carried out a wide-ranging survey of the risks and problems involved".
I should say that this letter was dated the 8th November.

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"In the light of this survey, security measures have been strengthened. We are confident that these are adequate—a view shared by the Royal Commission".
My comment on that, of course, is that it entirely misses the point.
The Royal Commission is gratified that possibly its observations have caused a review of the current security measures—a little strengthening of the fences here and there; a few more guards put on, possibly, here and there—but, of course, this is not what we were worrying about. We were worrying about what the situation could be if one had the proliferation of fast-breeder reactors on the kind of scale which is contemplated in the estimates and scenarios provided for us by the Department and by the Atomic Energy Authority. That is the situation we were concerned about, and the fact that nobody seemed to be thinking about it. That is what was worrying us; and, of course, this kind of assurance gets one absolutely nowhere in the light of what was really troubling the Royal Commission. The fact that, even now, that should not be recognised at the highest quarters is, I think, considerably disturbing.
My second quotation refers to the management of radioactive waste. Here, the Royal Commission said in paragraph 427:
"The picture that emerges from our review of radioactive waste management is in many ways a disquieting one, indicating insufficient appreciation of long-term requirements either by government departments or by organisations concerned … a much more urgent approach is needed.".
Again, in our report we tried to spell out the circumstances which led us to that conclusion. Again, what concerned us most was the impression—and, as a lay person, I can speak only in such terms—that one received from our witnesses that they were not sufficiently concerned at what legacy we might be leaving for posterity.
My third quotation is from the chapter in which we discuss at some length energy strategy, to which reference has been made already several times in this debate. Again we have to conclude in paragraph 479:
"… we regard the approach to future energy supplies that forms the basis of official strategy as unconvincing".
The noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, said that you could quote us in any direction; but
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the three passages that I have quoted give a fairly conclusive indication of what the Royal Commission felt in three major areas of concern in this whole matter: in the fields of security, of waste management and energy strategy. Our witnesses in these three fields failed to convince us. I would respectfully suggest that this fact should cause some disquiet in all quarters of the House, even if on various matters of detail you may fault us, criticise us or disagree with us.
Furthermore, we were far from content with the way in which it seemed to us that energy supplies, or potential energy supplies, and specific user requirements are matched, or fail to be matched. If, as Mr. Benn has recently suggested, energy should be regarded as a form of currency —a view which I, for one, would be inclined to support—then it seems to me obvious that the accounting procedure should be radically overhauled and stripped of the historic impedimenta which each separate energy-producing industry has acquired over the years. It was one of our strongest impressions that each of the different energy-producing industries in this country has naturally grown up within its own context, with its own history and its own problems and that there is no one at a high enough level yet to be able to disregard some of these historical incrustations in reaching a national fuel policy, using our resources in the most intelligent and most economic way.
We concluded among other points that the official strategy would be unnecessarily wasteful of primary energy resources. We were not particularly favourably impressed by the efforts so far to ensure adequate conservation of energy. We know that there has been an advertising campaign; but how much more have we really done in practical terms to ensure that we make the very best and most economic use of all the energy resources at our disposal? We were not impressed by the proportion of our research and development resources which had been devoted hitherto to alternative methods of meeting our needs. I am aware that some increase has been made—and I think a little more is in prospect—in the research and development of alternative sources of energy; but again there was no conviction about this, no real sense of urgency. One felt that those in authority were entering

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into such matters with great reluctance and really only in response to popular and largely lay pressures.
We made it quite clear that we did not reject the nuclear option, as such. It would be quite irresponsible to do so. We accepted that some ongoing work is essential, particularly in order to keep our own scientists abreast of developments and able to take a full part in future programmes. I, myself, was much disappointed at the announcement made yesterday in Brussels that yet again European work on the fusion project has been deferred because we cannot agree among ourselves on where it is to be sited. One must not be too romantic about the possibility of fusion. Plainly the technological problems are immense before it can be brought to practical use. Nevertheless, it is an alternative which offers many advantages over the fission process and therefore one wants to feel that there is a sense of urgency about making progress in this direction, a sense of urgency which I found conspicuously lacking in a number of the official witnesses who appeared before us.
We summarise in paragraph 512 what, for the lay members of the Commission at least, was our major difficulty. What we simply could not swallow was the attitude we described in that paragraph; namely, the basic belief of the Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Authority that nuclear fission, using the fast breeder reactor, is the only real option for meeting our future energy needs. Once you take that as a starting point, in effect you disregard every other possibility and you do not pay sufficient attention to dealing with the inevitable hazards which such a programme would bring in its train. The minds of too many of the official witnesses who appeared before us seemed, to some of us at least, to be virtually closed to anything other than the fast breeder reactor programme. This, I think, was what made them so reluctant to pay adequate attention to the long-term problems, which the Royal Commission tried to bring before them.
As we pointed out in the concluding section of the report, this attitude could lead to the recognition of dangers when it would then be too late to avoid them. We came to the view that the only way to
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cure this one-sidedness was to extend the area of operation in Government so that these overwhelmingly important issues should receive the continuing examination that they deserve by persons, independent of the Executive agencies, either in the various energy-producing industries themselves or in the Departments.
As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has indicated, Mr. Benn is reported to be considering rather a different type of body, representing various interests, which would debate the issue of public policy. I suggest that we need both. The first, a standing energy commission, requires people able for a period to give a great deal of their time to the matter and to have a very high level of competence. The amount of work which we, as members of the Royal Commission, had to devote to our own study—which was, after all, in a sense a superficial one and was primarily concerned with principles—convinces me that no coming together of a representative group involved mainly in other fields of interest could possibly undertake the examination in depth which is required if we are to produce and to monitor a satisfactory energy policy. The representative group could function properly only after the examination in depth had been accomplished and results made available.
We refer in paragraph 514 to the possible widening of the responsibilities of the Atomic Energy Authority itself to include responsibility for research and development in renewable energy as well as in the nuclear field. This could be a useful corrective to the excessive partisanship which now prevails and which is probably unavoidable when the sole remit, as at present. is the production of power by nuclear means. We also make proposals for a specific agency to take over the disposal of nuclear waste. I am sure that Members of all parts of the House would agree that we have no right to leave to posterity a hazardous legacy which we have not done our utmost to dispose of safely. Under the present unified responsibility for energy production and waste disposal, it seems quite clear that the latter takes second place. Therefore we felt that a body concerned only with the problems of waste disposal would be more likely to reach satisfactory methods of dealing with it.

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Overshadowing our deliberations was the consciousness that we could not in any way examine the military side of this problem. We felt nevertheless that the fast breeder programme would make it easier to proliferate both materials and skills which could be used for weapons purposes; and not only that, but that if in this country and other parts of the world we relied on this proliferation of nuclear installations, there would be added a further dimension to any possible nuclear war by providing so many nuclear targets. These would obviously be the prime objective of enemy action, with devastating consequences.
We may decide, my Lords, that, in order to sustain or improve our standard of living, it is worth taking these more or less calculated risks. Nevertheless, people have the right to have these risks explained to them so far as one possibly can. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, was content with the way in which we had endeavoured to explain in intelligible language what some of the problems really are. In many cases where we expressed disquiet it was not intended to convey that we lacked faith in the ability of scientists to solve some of these problems ultimately; but you cannot take it for granted. Even if the "Micawberish" attitude, which some of us found so distasteful, proved correct, and a solution to all the technical and scientific problems turned up, there is one problem which no scientist can solve: the problem of human nature. You may find all the answers, but you cannot ensure that they will be applied. You cannot ensure that they will be applied even in the next few decades, let alone for a period of time which our imagination can scarcely encompass.
Since our report appeared, other reports have also appeared to which reference has been made, in particular the Fox Report in Australia. It is entirely coincidental that this came to much the same conclusions as we did. It justifies both the choice by the Royal Commission of this subject for its investigations, and the general tenor of our report. If in our Sixth Report we have made people stop and think, we shall have achieved a worthwhile objective.
1.14 p.m.
Lord HINTON of BANKSIDE: My Lords, the Flowers Report has attracted a great deal of publicity. There is an obvious need to discuss it, and I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, for giving us an opportunity of debating it today. It is worth while to remind ourselves of the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. They were:
"To advise on matters, both national and international"—
I should like to underline the word "international"—
"concerning the pollution of the environment; on the adequacy of research in this field; and the future possibilities of danger to the environment".
I should like to suggest that both the Royal Commission, which is now re constituted, and we in this House should he careful that we do not take too narrow a view when we talk about the environment. There are some environmentalists who give the impression that the only environment that they think about is the one which they can judge in visual and ecological terms. But there is another environment, a much more material one, which provides amenities and environmental benefits of a different kind which are at least equally valuable and, indeed, are thought by some people to be more valuable than the visual and ecological amenities.
I have in mind such amenities as roads, the supply of electric power, gas, of reliable piped water supplies and even food. All those amenities are too often taken for granted. It is only when we are denied their use by an act of God or man that we realise how much they mean in our lives. Who is there who would wish to go back to the standard of material amenity which I used to think quite normal when a small boy? At that time in the average household the bedrooms were perhaps heated only in time of illness. They were lit by oil lamps or candles. There was running water only in the scullery and, except in large towns, there was no electricity—indeed, I clearly remember the first time that I ever saw electric light.
The provision of those material amenities has demanded the sacrifice of some visual and ecological amenities; and, moreover, it has demanded the acceptance of risk. In the early days of power plants

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many boilers exploded. I remember this in the early days of my own engineering career. It is interesting to remember that James Watt said that Trevithick should be hanged for building power plants which used steam at above atmospheric pressure. Trevithick was using steam at 30 lb per square inch. It is today used almost universally at pressures over 2,000 lb per square inch.
In the early days—and still even today—many high dams failed, often with heavy loss of life. There were people killed by electrocution or gas explosions. That still happens today. But those risks have been accepted because the public felt that the material amenities that were provided outweighed not only the sacrifice of visual and ecological amenity, but also the risks that have had to be taken. Over many years the balance was too heavily weighted in favour of material amenity. I think that that balance is better adjusted now, but we must be careful that it does not swing too far in the other direction.
Like every other development that seeks to provide higher standards of material amenity, the development of nuclear power involves risks. How slowly and cautiously those risks ought to be faced depends on the urgency of the need, and that urgency depends on the demand for and availability of energy supplies. I suggest that the availability of energy is a problem which cannot be considered on a national basis. We are part of the European Economic Community and we and that Community are part of a world community. A criticism that might possibly be made of the Royal Commission is that it approached the problem a little narrowly. This ought not to be done. The problem of energy supplies is a global one and it must be considered globally. It is perhaps surprising that a problem of such importance should have received so little and such poor consideration in the past. It is now being thought about more carefully. There is an international committee sitting under the chairmanship of Professor Carroll Wilson at MIT. It has already produced its first report and I believe that its final report is to be available in March next year. At the same time, the World Energy Conference which, with its membership of over 60 nations, has extremely good access to information from the developing world. It is doing a similar study which will extend further into the
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future. The Carroll Wilson study extends only to the year 2000, but the World Energy Conference study goes as far as the year 2020.
The Royal Commission report of course considers this question of energy availability, but I feel that it has considered it a little narrowly. The report does very little to quantify the problem. I have already said that the information that would enable quantification to be done is scarce and shaky, but such figures as exist suggest that the world's supply of oil will peak during the 1990s and that, after that decade, the supplies of oil will gradually diminish so that oil supplies will fall seriously short of unconstrained demand. The position in regard to gas is perhaps a little better, though not much better. Oil and gas provide between 60 and 70 per cent. of the world's energy, so, unless our present best guess figures are wildly wrong, the sources of two-thirds of the world's energy supply will be diminishing before the end of this century. That is a prospect which contrasts fairly harshly with what we have been used to over the last two or three decades when world energy consumption has been increasing at the rate of 5 per cent. per year. That is the rate of increase to which the world has become accustomed.
I am bound to say that I find it quite impossible to feel, as some people appear lightheartedly to feel, that the energy gap can be bridged by the use of renewable energy resources. I believe that it is worthwhile to spend a few minutes looking at those renewable resources. Hydropower is expected to supply about 6 per cent. of world needs by the end of this century. Tidal power, which is so often talked about, can only supply a tiny fraction of the world's requirements. There are probably less than a dozen sites in the world where the tidal range is sufficient to make tidal power economic. One of those is in our own Severn estuary, and if that was developed it would give us less than 2½ per cent. of the energy requirements of this country.
If one counts on wind power, we can perhaps get a picture by remembering that, in order to supply the electricity requirements of this country alone, one would need to build windmills with a sweptwing area of 200 square miles and that, in order to be effective, those windmills would have to be built upon open stretches

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of coastline or of uplands which are valuable as open spaces.
Solar energy is of course already used and has been used for many years in order to supply domestic heating. I am quite certain that this use will increase but, when we think about solar energy as a source of electric power, we should remember that before it becomes economic the capital cost must be reduced by at least one order of magnitude. In fact, on the basis of present-day figures,. it would have to be reduced by two orders of magnitude; that is, it would have to come down by a factor of 100.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, surely no one in this country is thinking of solar energy as a source of electrical power. Rather, they are thinking of it as a source of low grade heat for domestic heating, for example.
Lord HINTON of BANKSIDE: My Lords, I am not certain that the noble Lord is right in saying that nobody is thinking of it in that way. I myself would certainly think of it in that way and should do so for one good reason: the incidence of solar power in this country is about 40 per cent. of the incidence of solar power in countries with a clearer atmosphere and more sun. The inference is that electricity generated by solar power would cost at least twice as much in this country as it would in countries with a more favourable climate. Remembering that the prosperity of this country was built largely on cheap power, I very much doubt whether that prosperity can be rebuilt on energy developed from solar cells. I think that, with increasing fuel costs, the use of solar energy for domestic heating will increase but I believe that we should remember that this will only provide a comparatively small percentage of the total energy that is used in this country.
There are of course a few places in the world where geothermal energy can be used. In this country, the prospects are limited. It is true that from hot rocks in Cornwall one could get water at a temperature of 100/200 degrees Centigrade, but I do not know what one could do with water at that temperature except to warm the houses in Newquay, Penzance, Redruth and Camborne.
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I think that at present one ought to regard wave power as being only a sparkle in the eyes of the scientists and engineers. I would guess that, if by chance it proved practical in the future, it would then be as violently opposed by environmentalists as is nuclear power today. It would materially change the characteristics of a number of the most attractive coastlines.
So, within the critical period that we have to consider, I find it impossible to believe that renewable energy resources will give more than marginal relief. In addition, I cannot help feeling—and I say this with some regret—that conservation of energy will not avert the energy gap my fear is that conservation will be taken seriously only when real shortages start to hurt, and that will be too late for effective action to be taken.
I should like once more to emphasise the fact that we must consider the question of energy resources and demands globally. We cannot consider only the position in the industrialised countries of Europe and North America. We ought, I suggest, to remember that while Europe consumes about 3.5 tons of energy per capita per year in terms of oil equivalent—and the consumption in the United States of America is double that figure—the consumption in the developing countries is only about one-tenth of our consumption.
Having made all reasonable allowances, I think the difference between the energy consumption in the industrialised countries and in the Third World represents a difference in standards of living which I do not believe ought to be tolerated indefinitely and which I do not think will he tolerated indefinitely. On top of that, we ought to remember that the population of the Third World is increasing much more quickly than the population of industrialised countries; so, having taken all these things into consideration, I am hound to believe that a global energy gap at about the end of this century is inevitable. That gap can he alleviated—I do not think it can be avoided—by the conservation of fuel and the vigorous development of all new and renewable sources of energy, including nuclear power.
Within our time-scale, the availability of virgin uranium is so limited that in

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order to have nuclear power the world must have both thermal and fast breeder reactors. It is no use persuading our-selves that we can wait for the fusion reactor. That will not be ready to alleviate the gap of which I am speaking, and those environmentalists who persuade themselves that the fusion reactor is going to be free from nuclear risks ought to remember that although, with luck, it will not give rise to long-lived fission products, it may very well give rise to a tritium hazard.
The Royal Commission is right in saying that hazards can arise from nuclear power. Hazards arise from almost every one of those activities which aim to provide material amenities. What we should do is to weigh the risk of accident against the risk of a sudden decline in the standard of economic material amenity. Far be it from me to express any opinion which might be considered to be political, but I should have thought there were political as well as material risks arising from a sudden decline in living standards.
I feel that the report of the Royal Commission has failed to take as broad and global a view as it should have done, and that it has perhaps failed to strike a realistic balance between the risks which the world has to face. The Commission is right in criticising atomic energy organisations for being dilatory in devising safe methods of disposing of fission products. It is right in suggesting that great care is necessary in developing and building nuclear power plants; but it seems to me it is wrong—I feel inclined to say surprisingly wrong—in suggesting that it is the fast reactor which takes us into a plutonium economy. The world is already in a plutonium economy. Per unit of electricity generated, the thermal reactors already in use all over the world produce as much, if not more, plutonium as fast reactors with the same generating capacity would do.
I think that the Commission is wrong in suggesting that fast reactors are inherently more dangerous than thermal reactors. Fast reactors with a mixed plutonium and uranium fuel have an inbuilt nuclear stability; I suggest that the Commission is wrong if it thinks that a district hazard would arise from fire in the inactive sodium circuit. I believe
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the world must have nuclear power and that fast reactors must be a part of the world's nuclear programme because only a wisely integrated programme of thermal and fast reactors will enable us to use the world's supply of uranium economically. We ought not to squander those resources in the same way that the world's resources of fossil fuels have been squandered. Construction of fast and thermal reactors ought to go steadily forward. Only a steady, determined and continuous development of reactors by competent and uncomplicated organisations will ensure that the risks, to which the Commission rightly draws attention, are tolerable.
I found, I am afraid, that the report was not so much cautious—in matters such as this, proper caution is a virtue—but that it was perhaps rather lacking in balance, and that some of its paragraphs seems to he so over-cautious as to be timid and almost contradictory. But, having said all that, I think that the development of fast reactors will go ahead to supply the needs of the world. Other countries are perhaps accepting a different, possibly a better, balance of risks and, undeterred by this report, will go on to make fast reactors a commercial success, because they know that nuclear power is essential to the world.
I can only hope that the report will not be sadly damaging to the British nuclear industry. At one time we led the world in the development of fast reactors, just as at one time we led the world in the development of thermal reactors. In spite of recent setbacks to the prototype fast reactor at Dounreay, I believe that energetic action could again give us a world lead and that this lead would enable us to exercise a useful influence on safe reactor design throughout the world—a useful influence which I think we can claim to have exercised in the past. It would also help British industry. In Britain, where in recent years decision-making in the field of nuclear power has not been notably firm or unhesitating, I can only hope that the hesitancy of the Royal Commission's report will not so delay progress as to rob us of the success which is still within our reach.
1.38 p.m.
The Lord BISHOP of DURHAM: My Lords, it is a fearsome task to speak from these Benches after such a powerful speech

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delivered by someone who has unrivalled authority to speak on these matters. I am sure the whole House would wish me to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, on what he has said and on the way in which he has said it. I should like particularly to thank him for expanding the debate beyond the limits of the particular context of environmental pollution, with which inevitably the Royal Commission has to concern itself and about which I feel it is a little unhappy because it has to concern itself with that.
As I see it, the debate in which we are engaged this afternoon is of fundamental importance concerning the kind of society which we hope for in the future.
One passage in the report which has been indirectly referred to more than once, recognises a danger that the debate will he distorted. If I may, I will quote from it briefly, because Sir Brian Flowers, in his address to the Nuclear Energy Society, picked out this passage and then said that those who quoted him usually omitted the punch line, which is the last sentence. The report says in paragraph 499:
"It is important that the discussion should be well-informed and as far as possible dispassionate…. Nuclear power provides a dramatic focus for opposition in some countries to technological development and we have no doubt that some who attack it are primarily motivated by antipathy to the basic nature of industrial society, and see in nuclear power an opportunity to attack that society where it seems likely to be most vulnerable, in energy supply…. The environmentalist tends to see those in the industry as being so committed to furtherance of their technology as to be wilfully blind to its dangers to the world. Those within the industry … tend to see environmentalists as people opposed to all technology who are prepared to denigrate their work on the basis of drummed-up and nebulous fears of future catastrophes."
Then comes the punch line:
"The arguments of both deserve to he heard with greater mutual understanding."
And I would add that the general public also needs to be made aware that this is not just a technical debate about the balance of energy needs and environmental risks. Unless it is acknowledged to have ramifications for the whole of our social and political life, the temptation might be to hand it over to those with technical expertise to evaluate what are still, in many spheres, uncertain quantities.
I suspect that any evaluation of risks in this field is bound to be inconclusive. It is always possible, as has already been
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done, to play down the element of risk in nuclear technology by claiming that future advances in handling them will keep pace with nuclear expansion. Fifteen years is a long time in nuclear technology, as Windscale has recently reminded us. On the other side, it is equally possible to claim that it is always yesterday's hazards which have been mastered, never today's or tomorrow's. If the argument about future advances is pressed, I would urge those who press it to remember that it may apply just as forcibly to those alternative forms of energy which the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, has dismisssed so eloquently.
The blunt fact is that the resources have simply not been put into the investigation of those alternative forms that have already been put into the investigation of nuclear energy, and all that may be needed is a massive enough investment to enable those alternative forms to be looked at on a level with what the nuclear lobby advocates. The answer in this field, it seems to me, is that we simply do not know. But I believe that the people who are worried about nuclear risks have grounds for being more worried than those who watch steam engines exploding, simply because of the long-term nature of these risks. An explosion in a steam engine may he fearful and may be destructive, but its effects do not last for thousands of years. I would commend to your Lordships a safe working rule on the subject of accidents resulting from human fallibility. The rule states:
"Whatever is not impossible is, in the end, inevitable."
The wider debate, both on environmental risks and on long-term social implications, has already been taken up by the Churches, notably by the World Council of Churches, and I thought it might be of interest to your Lordships to say a brief word on what has been happening. The World Council of Churches commissioned a major study on nuclear energy in 1974, and sponsored an international hearing in Sweden in June 1975. This brought together nuclear and other scientists of many nationalities, together with politicians, theologians and Church leaders, and produced a balanced survey of the whole subject which has been widely commended, and which I am sorry not to see referred to in the Royal Commission's report. A selection of the

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preliminary papers and of the discussion has just been republished in Scotland under the title Facing up to Nuclear Power.
The general conclusions of this hearing in Sweden were very cautious:
"Our group cannot put forward categorical recommendations. It would not feel justified in either entirely rejecting, nor in wholeheartedly recommending, large-scale use of nuclear energy."
If that does not seem very helpful, at least it reflects the fact, as the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, has reminded us, that this is a world problem and that on a world scale there is not likely to be a consensus. The problems in this respect of Sweden, as compared with, say, Latin America, are totally different. Indeed, it is notable in this World Council report how strongly the representatives of Latin American countries emphasise their need for nuclear independence. The key word there, I believe, is "independence". They want to develop their own, even at the cost of making mistakes. It is also worth reminding ourselves that India began its nuclear programme as early as 1948, as one of its first gestures of scientific freedom.
The Churches in a number of individual countries have followed the lead given by the World Council of Churches. At the beginning of this year, the National Council of Churches in the United States suggested a moratorium on the develop-ment of the fast breeder reactor, but they then subsequently modified their position, saying that they were putting this forward as a stimulus for discussion rather than as a firm recommendation. The Church of Scotland has adopted broadly the same view. An influential group of theologians and scientists in West Germany has produced a nine-point programme, in which they set out the terms of a suggested moratorium on the development of the fast breeder reactor. Churches have been responsible for initiating public debates in New Zealand, in Denmark and in Argentina, and last week the British Council of Churches arranged a two-day public hearing in London. I mention this to illustrate my point that public debate on the broad social and ethical issues is both possible and desirable, and, at least in the Churches, there is a growing awareness that the whole subject ought not to be left to the professionals.
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I think we can see part of the reason for this in the words of an Indian scientist:
"Scratch any piece of technology and you will find the values and aims of a society it was designed to serve. For technology is like genetic material. It carries with it the code of the society which conceived it."
This is why the choice of technology is such a crucial decision in the developing countries today. The kind of society and the kind of environment which they will create, depend to a large extent on what technology they choose for the job of development. What is true of technology as a whole is surely even more true of nuclear technology, because ultimately it concerns not a fringe benefit but the resource on which the whole of an industrial society depends. The point is that if this resource in turn depends upon a highly advanced technology, then the implications for this are felt right down the technological ladder.
A society which is dependent upon nuclear energy—I am not speaking now simply of Britain but of the developing countries which are looking for their way forward into the kind of life which we enjoy—must inevitably be an advanced technological society, with all that that entails in terms of social organisation, the use of other resources, besides those of energy, and the whole gamut of pollution problems: not just those directly resulting from the use of nuclear energy. When this is viewed on a world scale, the implications, certainly to some, are (I think rightly) alarming. Admittedly, the economic implications of not pressing ahead with nuclear development are also alarming, and our difficulties are compounded by the fact that whatever is decided in the next few years is going to have immensely long-term consequences.
My own belief is that despite all the risks, we ought to delay and make quite sure that we know what the alternatives are before committing ourselves further to an expanded nuclear programme. Once we enter upon that programme, the logic of events is that it will gradually accumulate uncontrollable momentum. I must admit that, influencing this belief that we ought to delay, is a general feeling that the developed nations must begin to think in terms of technological restraint. This is not a question of going back to the Dark Ages or throwing away all the things which we possess. It is a question of

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taking our foot off the accelerator, in that we simply cannot go on with our present accelerating technological expansion.
I take the point made by the Royal Commission, that opposition to nuclear energy can provide a dramatic focus for opposition to technological development, but I have in mind something much less extreme than have some of the environmental lobbyists. I am not what the Americans now rather nicely call a "tawny pipiteer", but there is a time to say, No. Christian concern, as expressed through the Churches in many nations, seems to he pointing to the hope of the possibility—I put it no more firmly than that—that the "No" can be taken seriously. If it were taken seriously on this particular issue, it could set in motion a process of thinking about the style and basis of our society which could in the long run lead to a saner kind of World.

WINDSCALE
1.53 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, if your Lordships will forgive me for interrupting the debate for a moment, I am sure the House would like to know that a Statement is being made in another place this after-noon on Windscale. My noble friend Lady Birk will, with the leave of the House, repeat this Statement at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m.

NUCLEAR POWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
1.54 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Lord ALDINGTON: My Lords, I rise to continue the debate. I should like to assure the right reverend Prelate that I will do my best to follow his injunction, and the injunction in the report, that we should seek better to understand each other and that we should do so in a dispassionate way. If I appear to err, it might be because I spent last night in an aeroplane flying from New York and I am a little short of sleep.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, said that a galaxy of scientists and engineers
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was to speak to your Lordships in this debate. I am not one of those; but I have an interest to declare, in that I am honoured to be the Chairman of the National Nuclear Corporation. That is the instrument of this Government and their predecessor, with shares held jointly by Government and industry, which has been chosen to be responsible for the design and construction of nuclear power stations. Although I am that chairman, I shall be speaking personally and I do not bind any of my colleagues, or the Corporation, or its subsidiary, the Nuclear Power Company. I can speak personally because I have had a long span of interest in nuclear power, starting in the days when I was Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Supply from 1951 to 1954. For me, at any rate, it is interesting to remember that it was in 1953 that we announced in the other place the start of the Dounreay project.
I suppose that those of us who are concerned with nuclear power may be said to have some prejudice in favour of nuclear power and some prejudice against the environmentalists. I hope that your Lordships will accept from me that I try not to have that prejudice. I am every hit as much a human being as any of your Lordships or, indeed, as any of the right reverend Prelates. I have a strong prejudice in favour of life and of good health and a good environment, not only for ourselves but also for future generations. Knowing them as I do, I am certain that is true also of my noble friend, if I may call him so, Lord Sherfield, who started this debate with such an excellent speech, and of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, who has such massive authority and who spoke to us in such a very persuasive and convincing way.
I agree at once that people have a right to have the risks and hazards explained to them in the way in which that is done in this very lucid and comprehensive report. I do not think I am so critical about the report as was the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, in his speech. I found the report balanced and clear. I found also that it set out with as much force the risks and hazards of not having nuclear power as it did the risks and hazards attached to having nuclear power. However, I should like to stress to your Lordships what my

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noble friend Lord Sherfield said, that because it is a balanced report it is very important that sentences and paragraphs should not be taken out of their context and used for a case which the Com-missioners did not make. I think that that has been done outside this House but not, happily, here today.
The importance of avoiding emotion and passion is as great, I think, as the importance of avoiding unbalanced presentations while the debate, which I fear will last longer in our country than the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, would like, proceeds. I very much hope that the media, particularly the British Broadcasting Corporation, will not repeat unbalanced presentations like a recent one in "Panorama".
I should like to direct my remarks, and I hope they will be quite short, first to the plutonium argument, secondly to the policy on nuclear fission power, with particular reference to Recommandation 45, and, last, to the fast breeder, but before I come to those three points there are some general considerations which I will mention, although they have been stressed in several speeches. We cannot under-stand the problems attaching to nuclear power, whether they be development, waste, environmental or whatever, or the hazards of not having the nuclear option, unless we look at the whole matter in its full international as well as national context. The noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, made the point, as also did the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, both of them powerfully.
The second general consideration is that the progress in nuclear power, not only in this country but outside, in these last 25 years has been remarkable by any standards, and despite what the right reverend Prelate said there is no reason to suppose that the advances towards perfection will not continue at as fast a pace in the next quarter century. The report necessarily stresses points where more work is needed to provide proper conditions for a larger programme, in waste, in safeguards and in other matters.
For those who cast doubt upon the ability of the industry and technology and the scientists to make further progress, I think it is as well to remember that they, too, are human beings and they are
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more closely concerned than any of us, not only with the success of what they are trying to do but with the safety of every-thing they design and help to produce. This most valuable corps d'é lite of scientists and engineers and others that has been created during the last 20 years by people like the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, and others of your Lordships who are not here today, shares with the rest of us the absolute need to provide safety; and, as I have said, they have an even greater urgency and personal concern because they are—or may be—closely connected in their daily life with nuclear power. They also know more about the facts which affect the risks and hazards, but it is unhappily true that neither in the United States of America nor here have their voices been able to reach the public as easily or as forcefully as have the voices of others.
I now come, shortly, to some of the plutonium arguments. I should first like to ask the question: Is not the phrase "the plutonium economy" rather an emotive phrase that might prevent discussion being quite as dispassionate as the report intends it to be? Of course plutonium is nasty and potentially lethal to communities as well as to individuals, but so, as the report reminds us, is chlorine, and so—as others of your Lordships will know—are a lot of other elements and poisons. The arguments in Chapter VII of the report are all important arguments but they seem to me to be heavily influenced by the programme that is set out in Table 14. It is a programme for the construction of nuclear power stations in this country put before the Commission, I think, by the Atomic Energy Authority in relation to a question about how much waste products they would have to deal with. The programme in that table includes 30,000 megawatts of nuclear power by 1990 and 104,000 by the end of the century, of which it is thought 33,000 would be from fast reactors.
I cannot believe that such a programme is either possible or probable, either in the requirement or in the achievement. For my own part, I would not expect there to be more than one or two fast reactors operating in this country in this century. Nevertheless, the arguments in the report must be taken seriously, even though it is right to make the point that if they are

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wrong about the programme, they are wrong about the time-scale in which the problems that exist can—and I am sure will—be solved.
Though I say that the argument should be taken seriously, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has said I hope that we shall not be too much put out by the fear of sabotage and terrorism as being things which would happen only with—or the better with—a large nuclear power programme. A saboteur has easier targets (and as damaging) than a nuclear power plant or even a reprocessing plant. As I heard the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, describe how a terrorist might take a piece of explosive and blow up a nuclear power station I wondered whether he really knows how thick the concrete is round these nuclear power stations and how impossible it was during the last World War by the very biggest bombs to break through what was, I believe, less strong concrete covering the submarine bases. So I think we can make too much of some of that argument. I also have to point out that terrorists can find more immediately effective poisons than plutonium, if they want to, and if they really want to get bomb material they would not be deprived of the chance of so doing by our not having a nuclear power programme, or even having a smaller one. Nevertheless, of course, security is important and security of plutonium in transit is obviously important, but I am told by experts that at least in that instance the terrorist can be dissuaded from stealing the plutonium, or if he does steal it he can be effectively prevented from making use of it it the plutonium is only sent in transit in fuel form and is slightly radioactivised. Indeed, the report itself makes that point.
I now come to recommendation No.45 about the nuclear power plant policy. As has been said, the report does not advocate a non-nuclear strategy. Indeed, in a speech on the 2nd December to which the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, referred, Sir Brian Flowers advocated the keeping in being of the nuclear industry—and I quote—"at the lowest level that is viable", and the noble Baroness, Lady White, in what I thought was a very fair and interesting and pleasant speech, made the same point. Sir Brian Flowers went on to define this lowest level as ordering one
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thermal station every two to three years. I look at the problem a little differently and I think rather more positively but I agree that there has to be a minimum ordering programme. Although there is no present need for any more power stations in England and Wales and no need for orders for any large nuclear programme until, say, 1984 at the earliest, there may be a need for a large programme then. The simple fact is that we have no proven ability to produce up-to-date, proven types of reactor in series. There is no proven nuclear industry suitable yet for a large programme. It would take time for both of these things to be secured. Indeed, we still have to reach a decision about the system to be adopted as the best system for the 1990s—which is what it is all about: not the best system for the 1970s.
Here I must refer again to the international point and take up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, about the outside world and the Third World. I would think that certainly British industry shares this view with me. We should be able to play our part in building nuclear power stations overseas. We cannot do that at present, and certainly cannot do that if we do not have a programme at home. It may interest your Lordships to be reminded that the CPRS in their recent report on the power plant industry have noted that one of the main reasons for low exports by that industry is the failure of the industry to have a capability for taking turnkey nuclear power contracts. Therefore, a number of things need to be done to ensure that we have a viable nuclear industry, and to ensure that the nuclear power option really is there. I join with the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, in calling for an unequivocal commitment to nuclear power, at least as far as that. Time is important because, first, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, said, in all energy production there is a long lead time, and particularly is that true of nuclear power. Now is the time to seek to prepare for the 'nineties, but now is not the time to seek to postpone action out of fear of having too many nuclear power stations in 50 years' time.
My Lords, finally I come to the fast breeder. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, saying to your Lord-ships that the fast reactor is not inherently

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more dangerous than the thermal reactor. I know that to be his view. I think there are few who are entitled to express such a view with more authority. The importance of having the fast reactor in the system is well set out in the report, and I need not refer to it again. However, I do wish to refer to the fear expressed by the Royal Commission at paragraph 502, that because of the importance of the fast reactor we may be tempted to accept a quantitatively different increment in risk. Of course, that must mean not only ourselves, but the whole international world where the fast reactors are being developed. I must express my view to your Lordships that nothing is less likely with the men I know who design and operate nuclear reactors. They will not downgrade the element of risk just because of the importance of a particular type of reactor. The report, and also one or two of your Lordships, have expressed the view that there would be advantages in delaying the development of the commercial fast reactor, that is, the large one to follow the PFR now in operation at Dounreay. But such delay brings risks with it also.
I must say to your Lordships that to delay development of the CFR here will endanger the maintenance of the expert teams built up over the last 10 to 15 years. It would do something more; it would prevent us from recruiting new young men who will be needed very much in the 'nineties. Many of the men now at the head of design and construction and of research and development in the whole nuclear industry are men of an age who will have retired by the 'nineties when this work will be of such importance. But to delay will also endanger the chance of international collaboration, particularly collaboration with our European partners. It is by international collaboration that we shall be able to husband resources, which noble Lords have rightly asked us to do, in order that other options can be examined, and in order that conservation can be pushed ahead. So I hope that there will be no such delay.
Nevertheless I have already said that I do not expect the CFR to be built in this country in the near future. I do not expect more than one, or possibly two, to be operating before the end of the century. Such a programme combined with international collaboration would
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keep the team in being and would keep the nuclear operation viable. Those are the remarks I wished to make. I felt that I had a duty to put those points in front of your Lordships. My Lords, in closing, may I say again that, in my view, the report gives a backcloth for a national debate which I think will last for a number of years. However, I hope the Government will ensure that during that time of debate a nuclear power capability for the 'nineties and beyond is created and encouraged.
2.16 p.m.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, five years before I was born, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium. At that time it was looked upon, and indeed continued to be looked upon, as a scientific curiosity, as a bit of a toy, as a means of painting the hands of watches so as to make them visible at night, and for all sorts of purposes like that. At that time, the number of chemical elements known was something like 75. Today, I am wearing a tie which has upon it 103 of the known chemical elements. Of those, 11 are the transuranic elements, the ones which are artificially made by man. None of them existed in this world before—at any rate, not since the early days, and plutonium is one of those. I am speaking now not of myself but of scientists, who took very great risks.
A friend of mine works in the Curie Institute in Paris. When some alterations were being done, they found that under the floor of my friend's laboratory was some radium left from the time when the Curies had been working there. He got immensely scared. They investigated and found that the radium had obviously been there for a long time. My friend's desk had been right over where this material was, and he had been subjected to radiation for many years. But he survived all right. He is still alive, and this was 15 or 20 years ago.
I am not saying that in order to show how courageous scientists were. I am trying to point out that risks have been taken all the time; risks have been taken throughout the whole of our existence. In fact, man really is a very precarious animal. He lives all the time only because the forces of nature do not happen to explode devastatingly in his own particular region. When there is an

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earthquake in Turkey it does far more damage than any known effect by man, with the exception of the deliberate dropping of an atomic bomb. The accidents that have taken place have always been trivial compared with the forces of nature. A hurricane can do far more damage than anything we can think of doing. That does not, of course, mean that we neglect to pay attention to all those problems that arise from the activities of man, but I do think it is important for us to remember how trivial man is in comparison with the forces of nature. Even when he thinks he has domination over the forces of nature he still is very much subject to the forces of nature.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, gave us today one of the most remarkable analyses of the whole situation. In fact I suppose I really ought not to speak now, because Lord Hinton said everything that there was to be said; so anything I say is merely a frill, merely an elaboration of what he said, because he said it perfectly. He showed that when we are talking about nuclear energy in this country, or indeed in the whole of the developed world, we are being extraordinarily arrogant, because we are neglecting the far greater part of the world which is undeveloped. if we imagine that they are going to say "Of course, we are not going to have any growth at all, we shall continue to remain on an almost subhuman standard in order that you should be safe from any possible nuclear effects", I am afraid that we are deceiving ourselves. If one says that they do not know already, both India and Pakistan have already got facilities; they have been presented with these. Does one imagine that they are going to refuse to carry out development? Then, as Lord Hinton rightly pointed out, the ordinary thermal reactor is at least as dangerous as the fast breeder reactor, but with one enormous disadvantage, and that is that it is using up uranium at such a rate that there are not going to he the resources by the end of this century to fuel all the generators which will he put up. In other words, it is nonsense to say that we can continue with the present programme. It is just absurd. It makes no sense at all. Therefore, we have to think of going on further. What we do obviously has to be considered. I have a feeling that perhaps
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Lord Hinton, if he was still chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board, would probably, when the demise of the steam generating heavy water reactor was announced in The Times, have put in a little notice "No flowers by request". I think that he would probably feel that it was not wise for us to say much more about that.
But, my Lords, when we are discussing what we do with regard to the next step forward it is no use saying that we are going to jump forward to fusion. We hope we will go forward to fusion, but we have not yet got even a bench model fusion reactor working. All we have got is a reasonable indication that the fusion process will work; but the temperature we require is of the order of 50 to 100 million degrees and we have not yet had temperatures above 10 million degrees. So all we have is an indication that it may work. We are back with the fusion reactor in the position that Lord Rutherford was in in the Cavendish Laboratory when he first discovered that the atom could be split. We are nowhere near the point where we can even say that we know we can make it work. We have a good idea that it is possible. if we solve the problems within 30 or 40 years we shall be extraordinarily lucky. There-fore, we have to say that it is ruled out for this century. So far as this century is concerned, we will not have a working fusion reactor actually supplying energy for our main electricity supplies. I am prepared to make that bet, and I will stay alive in order to prove it.
With regard to the fast breeder reactor, the position is quite different. We know it will work. What we do not know yet are all the problems concerned with it. I have been rather fortunate, because I was over in America last month and I was speaking to Mr. Charles Rose, the Congressman, who happened to be vice-chairman of the Committee of which I was chairman. I asked him if he had any information he could give me. After I left America this Report was presented to Congress. It is dated 29th November. It is from the Comptroller-General of the United States, entitled, Considerations for Commercialising the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor This is the latest American report.
In this report they start by outlining the problems, and the problems are just

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the same for them as for us, except for one point. The problems as they put them down are as follows. One, what will be the principal characteristics of a com-mercial breeder reactor industry? Two, what supporting facilities and industry would be required to bring it into being and thereafter to support it? Three, when is a demonstration needed of the required technologies on a scale sufficient to warrant the commitments of those institutions whose support is essential to breeder reactor commercialisation? Four, what factors are likely to influence the timing and rate of commercial breeder reactor introduction and proliferation? The whole of the report deals with these points.
I sent the Report to Professor Bain-bridge at the University of Newcastle, who happens to be the adviser to Sub-Committee F of your Lordships' Scrutiny Committee. and he has sent me a number of comments on it. These are extremely interesting and very important for us. He says to begin with that the questions set out are equally pertinent for Britain, but he makes the point that the Americans are under no pressure to produce a fast breeder reactor, for two reasons: one, their nuclear industry is already over-committed on making the present type of reactor, and they have run into considerable technical difficulties; consequently they are rather behind schedule on producing them. Therefore, they are not in the least anxious at the moment to produce a fast breeder reactor.
Secondly, they are confident that they have got all the oil and coal that they want, even if they have to buy it, over the whole of this century, and they are still today, as anyone can see by going to America, very wasteful of their energy resources. So they are not at the moment worried about it. But, despite that, in this report there is this statement:
"The liquid metal fast breeder reactor has been accorded highest priority among energy supply technologies that hold long-term promise. This ranking is accompanied by the highest Federal outlay to date for any single energy research development system".
Although the Americans do not think that they have to produce a fast breeder reactor at once, they are pumping more money into it than they are into any other field of energy research, so that one can
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see that the Americans are not ignoring this field. What is their programme? Their programme essentially is that they propose that there should be a commitment to start a commercial fast breeder reactor in the early to mid 1980s. They reckon that it takes a long time to build one. In fact, their estimates are very interesting. They say that it would take 13 years to build a reactor; that it would take 10 years to build a fuel fabrication facility; it would take 12 years for a plutonium reprocessing facility, and 11 years for a radioactive waste disposal facility.
Professor Bainbridge tells me that the Americans in this field of fast breeder work are probably technically at least five years behind us, and that there is every probability, if we were to set out to do the same thing, that we would have a clear five years' advantage in building anything of this sort. We are faced with the position that we have no natural resources of uranium; all our uranium is imported. So far as America is concerned, they have natural resources; we have none. Consequently, every single ordinary thermal reactor we are using is using up uranium which has to be imported. The plutonium part of it can at the moment be used only for atom bombs. If, of course, some people would say,."We would much rather have atom bombs than fast breeder reactors", I can only retort, chacun a son goat It seems to me an extraordinary choice for us to have.
I was rather surprised that from the Liberal Benches we were told that we could do without this sort of thing. We cannot do without plutonium, as the noble Lord, Lord Aldington, said. It really is extraordinary to talk about a plutonium economy. We are in a plutonium economy. Plutonium is being produced all the time. The fast breeder reactor is a means of using that plutonium. It is a means of doing the job more efficiently; of making certain that we are able, with our limited amount of uranium, to go ahead. No one imagines that this is the end. One would hope that the fast breeder reactor would see us out through the end of this century into the beginning of the next century; that by then we may hope that fusion will come along. We may hope that all the other methods that are talked about may play their part; but, as

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the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, said, one cannot imagine that, however much all these other methods contribute, they will solve our energy problems.
I would say that obviously we have to pay the most careful attention, as the Royal Commission's report rightly asks us to do, to all the dangers; to look at everything with the greatest care. This is absolutely essential. But are we going to say that, because we do not yet know everything, therefore we condemn posterity to a lower standard of living, to less energy? If we do we are quite entitled to do it; but let us not, for heaven's sake, say how virtuous we are. Let us not say that in order to save them from one evil we condemn them to another, the one being uncertain, the other being dead certain.
It seems to me that the report of the Royal Commission is invaluable as a warning to us, as a guide, as advice; but that if, because of it, we say we do not build fast breeder reactors, then I would say that we are really suffering from the most extraordinary delusion. May I, in concluding, ask your Lordships' forgiveness if I do not stay to the end. I have a commitment which arises from the fact that the daughter of my niece is being christened this afternoon.
2.35 p.m.
Lord TEDDER: My Lords, I must begin on the opposite note to the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones. I must ask your Lordships to accept my apologies and ask for your indulgence because I am afraid that, owing to transportation difficulties, I was not here at the beginning of the debate. I apologise particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield. I should like to express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, for initiating this debate, and also to Sir Brian Flowers and his colleagues for what to me is an almost racy document. It is one of the rare occasions on which I have picked up a Command Paper and found it so easy and interesting to read.
There has been much discussion recently about replacing your Lordships' House by some alternative Second Chamber. There have been suggestions that the Second Chamber was to consist of political Peers in the same proportion as Members
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of the House of Commons. There were, in addition, to be Life Peers. I sincerely hope that if a new Chamber is created, Life Peers will be chosen for their distinction and experience in public affairs, the world of commerce, the trade unions and the scientific community. I also hope that, unlike the all-Party proposals, those Life Peers will have the right to vote, and that the Second Chamber will retain the power to delay but not permanently frustrate measures from the other place. The reason that I mention this is that we are now debating a highly technical and complex subject, and although there are more scientists in your Lordships' House than there are in the other place, none the less there are barely enough to make sure that all aspects of this extremely complex subject are going to be discussed.
Today we are discussing problems which involve physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, engineers, to name but a few, and although many noble Lords with scientific experience have spoken and are going to speak, I think I am one of the very few Members of your Lordships' House who daily spend a large part of their time in a laboratory. But I must add at once that, like the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, I am a chemist and not a physicist. In so far as I can speak with authority at all, it must be on the chemical aspects of pollution and energy.
Since what I want to say is almost wholly critical of plans for further development of nuclear power, either by fission or by fusion, let me make it clear at once that I am not opposed to big science. I sincerely believe that we should continue to support high energy physics with a view to elucidating the structure of the atomic nucleus, just as we should continue to explore space. Man has always felt the irresistible urge to explore the longest rivers, to climb the highest mountains, to reach the Poles, and so man has continued to explore the planets and to investigate the fine details of the structure of matter. But what we are concerned with today is not science developed simply for curiosity, important though that is, but customer contract science, or project orientated science, which will lead mankind to permanent sources of energy. I am absolutely convinced that our primary source of energy must be what it has always been, the sun. Although I accept that the wind and waves, which come

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from the sun anyway, may in certain circumstances he important sources of power, the really important source will be, as it always has been, the conversion of solar electromagnetic radiation into fuels by photochemical processes.
All the fossil fuels we have and use—from wood to peat, to coal, to oil—were formed by photochemical processes utilising sunlight to convert the carbon dioxide in the air and water into complex carbon substances. The total energy we release by the combustion of fossil fuels is infinitesimally small compared with the amount of electro-magnetic radiation which reaches the surface of the globe from the sun. There are two main ways in which solar energy can be utilised. The first is the direct conversion of solar radiation into either heat or electricity and the second is to use electro-magnetic radiation to produce chemical transformations leading to fuels, which can subsequently he burnt releasing the energy stored by chemical syntheses. It is the second use of solar energy that I wish to bring to your Lordships' attention.
There are two feasible processes. The simplest is the direct decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen and the subsequent use of the hydrogen as a fuel. A more sophisticated process would involve the photochemical transformation of carbon dioxide and water into formaldehyde or methanol and oxygen. Methanol would in this case be the fuel and clearly it would be more convenient than hydrogen. The important point about either of these processes is that they would have virtually no effect whatever on the environment. Sunlight would be used to convert water or water and carbon dioxide into a fuel which would then be burnt to give back water or water and carbon dioxide. This is not some farflung remote idea but is the very process which has been going on ever since life became well established on this planet.
The simplest process would be to grow green algae and extract them from water, dry them and burn the resulting powder. This would not be a very efficient process, and I gather there are numerous technical difficulties, and although green plants have always converted water and carbon dioxide from the air into potential sources of fuel, the very complexity of life means
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that much of the solar energy would have to he used in the preparation of highly complex chemical systems which would be unnecessary in any system devised simply for the photochemical synthesis of fuel.
I will give some figures to show that this is not a wild pipe-dream but a really practical proposition. If we assume that our solar factory is no better than 10 per cent. efficient, we should need only 360 miles square—that is perhaps cheating and I should put it the correct way round —or 125,000 square miles of the Sahara Desert to collect enough energy to supply the world needs of energy at the present time. The great natural deserts of the world, where the cloud cover is minimal, are also places where there is unlikely to he any great demand for development of the land, and as the needs of the solar factory would be so minute in space compared to the total desert space avail-able, there is no need to worry about possible environmental effects; I have emphasised that there is really no environ-mental effect except the factory.
To summarise, as the report before us shows, nuclear power brings with it many dangers to the environment and to the political stability of the world. I can think of nothing more shameful than the way in which this country, the United States and France have vied with each other in trying to sell nuclear technology and power plants, and by so doing have proliferated the capability to manufacture atomic weapons. I have been told that North Sea oil will have to flow for more than seven years before the cost of developing the oil will have been met. It seems to me that the cost of developing nuclear power has already reached the stage, rather like Concorde, when the development costs will rise more rapidly than the value of the energy produced.
According to the report, the annual expenditure by the Atomic Energy Authority on nuclear fission research and development amounts to about £80 million a year, compared with less than £500,000 currently spent on other sources, of which solar energy is simply one. I am not suggesting that there should be an immediate abandonment of all research and development on nuclear power, but I am suggesting that a transfer of sums even

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on a very small scale from nuclear fission research to photochemical research should be contemplated.
In paragraph 515, the Commission support the suggestion that there is need for a high level independent body to provide advice on energy strategy taking account of economic, social, technical and environmental considerations. The Commission go on to add that the study of nuclear power has made them aware of the need for an authoritative exposition of the implications of the different policies that might be adopted on energy supply. I am convinced that the Commission is right and that such a body should be set up, but I am also convinced that they will find that there are viable alternatives to nuclear power which are cheaper and which totally avoid the serious environmental problems associated with nuclear power. I am suggesting that perhaps Mother Nature was right all along. We must seek to use sunlight to promote photochemical reactions which lead to fuels. These fuels can be burnt at our leisure and yet their combustion will return to the atmosphere only the very chemicals we have taken from it in our photosynthesis.
2.47 p.m.
Lord ZUCKERMAN: My Lords, in his contribution today, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, if I understood him correctly, that he thought the debate about the exploitation of nuclear energy should now enter the democratic process. What-ever the constitution of your Lordships' House may be, I suggest that this debate shows that it has already done so. The correspondence in The Times and other newspapers and weekly scientific journals indicates the same thing. We therefore have to thank not only the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, for having initiated the debate but the Royal Commission for having produced a Report which has sparked off so much controversy. and indeed the Commission in its Report indicated that it was likely to stimulate controversy.
The noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, in a brilliant speech, suggested that the terms of reference of the Royal Commission, which he read out, had been interpreted a little too narrowly. On the other hand, the Royal Commission
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wondered whether it had strayed beyond the strict terms laid down for it. I know those terms of reference because—I can say this because Sir Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister of the day, records it in his book—I was one of those responsible for suggesting that there should be such a Commission. He also gives me credit for something I did not do, which was the background work for the Department of the Environment, which was not the Department of the Environment as we know it today.
I am certain that the Royal Commission has exceeded its terms of reference. A good chairman and a good committee will often do that and it is a good practice. But there should be a condition—it should do so with competence. Lord Hinton criticised many aspects of the Report, and I suggest that one should not mince one's words here. The Press has described it as a report which means all things to all men. That is perfectly true; one can take any quotation one likes from the report. But the overwhelming impression that has remained—an impression which. I fear, the noble Baroness, Lady White, did not dispel from my mind in her address, and an impression to which Lord Avebury added in his speech—is that nuclear power is too dangerous in itself and in the long term hardly acceptable as an option—an option which we need to keep open, as Lord Hinton indicated—because of its environmental, social and political consequences. May I say straight away that on this point I side absolutely with the noble Lords, Lord Hinton and Lord Wynne-Jones? I believe that we can rely on the competence and experience of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, in this field as much as—dare I say it and with great respect?—upon that of any member of the Royal Commission.
The report is also inconsistent in itself. It is not fair to itself. On page 191, paragraph 498, we read that the report is a complete account of the problem. When it comes to reactor safety, however, we are told on page 113, paragraph 282. that the Commission has not investigated the matter deeply. On page 4, paragraph 10, we are informed that inquiry would involve itself in matters beyond the competence of the Commission. On page 5, paragraph 14—and the noble Baroness, Lady White, referred to this point—we are told that the Commission

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had to educate itself on the matters concerned. I feel that we have a right to ask whether it succeeded in its task. If I may quote, as did the noble Baroness, Lady White, from the report, it also tells us that the Commission,
"has the duty to be the guardians of the future environment".
So have all of us, my Lords. The Commission has no monopoly of noble sentiment. We are concerned with this problem. We in your Lordships' House and the Members of Parliament in another place are also concerned with this matter. We all recognise that the exploitation of nuclear power is hazardous and that it demands the greatest care. This is no new discovery. The record of the industry is, so far, not short of miraculous. I want to emphasise those words.
But it is not true that we have always recognised the hazards. Those of your Lordships who may have read the memoirs of the late Lord Attlee may recall the passage in which he says that, when he had to endorse the suggestion put at the Potsdam Conference that nuclear weapons should be used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he did so in total ignorance of the fact they were dealing with anything other than bigger bangs. He says that it was not only he who was ignorant. President Truman and the previous Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and Sir John Anderson, who was in charge of the project, were ignorant, he says, and he goes on to add:
"So, I believe, were the scientists, unless they deliberately did not tell us."
I happen to know that the scientists were then not concerned with these hazards. Those few scientists who were in the know and who did not want to see nuclear power exploited in that particular way, were concerned with the vistas of destruction which would be opened up, not with any of the dangers about which we are now talking. We therefore have to ask ourselves whether, in the realisation that we have to use the option of nuclear power as the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, indicated, we can at the same time guard against the hazards. Also, we must see the problem in global terms, not just in terms that apply to this country. I do not know who it was who emphasised in the course of the debate that we should
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be failing in our duty if we did not pay attention to the energy needs of the world as a whole. No figures that I have ever seen suggest that we can dispense with nuclear power. We must also look at the problem in terms of those resources of energy other than nuclear power that can he used and of such new research as the noble Lord, Lord Tedder, has just referred to and also in terms of the social, economic and political factors involved.
Clearly, accidents can happen. The human factor cannot be guarded against, as the noble Baroness, Lady White, said. We are told on page 113, paragraph 284, of the report that—and this is an interesting quotation—
"it is a common experience … that incredible things do happen no matter how surprising [they may seem]".
I read that sentence more than once and asked myself how it was to be construed. I put it round this way:
"If it is common experience then the things that happen are surely credible".
Or are we to construe the sentence to mean that it is an uncommon experience for credible things to happen? There is magic in that sentence. It is a marvellous piece of logic.
I am neither a nuclear scientist nor a nuclear engineer, nor have I the privilege, like the noble Lord, Lord Tedder, of still working in a laboratory. But I am a scientist and I read the report closely as a scientist. I have also had the opportunity of discussing these matters in the United States, from which I returned only yesterday, with members of two major committees which are looking into the matter and which will shortly be reporting. One launched by the Ford Foundation is carrying out a much more extensive study than has ever been attempted before. The second is being carried out by the National Academy of Sciences. The worksheets are as voluminous as the report we are considering today.
This report goes to great length and in great detail into the theoretical principles of safety analysis, but nowhere, when discussing reactor safety, does it refer to the fact that we already have 200 years of reactor experience upon which to base ourselves. Nowhere, although there is a reference to the fact that the Commission had not been able to consider military

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matters, is there any reference—and there is no secret information in this—to the fact that over the past 20 years, there has been a minimum of 250 vessels at sea powered by nuclear reactors. The men in those ships are exposed to 100 per cent. risk, not a tailing-off risk, and there has been no accident.
If ever a field of engineering had been provided with prototype experience, I would say that it was this one of nuclear engineering. So far, nuclear engineers have definitely proved themselves competent for the task that they set themselves. If only the noble Lord, Lord Hilton, had been able to tell us about some of the magnificent work done by our own Atomic Energy Authority in its early years, your Lordships would be surprised at how much was achieved by so few.
Some peripheral parts of the report which go beyond the terms of reference are somewhat naive. Here I am speaking about a field where I have had to exercise myself in my previous official capacities. I find the references to sabotage and the making of nuclear bombs very odd. I should like to know whether any members of the Royal Commission would be able to steal a little plutonium—say 2 kilograms—and go and make a little nuclear weapon. Another piece of military science fiction is the suggestion that nuclear power plants would be prime targets in a third world war. The noble Baroness, Lady White, reminded us of the phrase, in the report. My Lords, if nuclear power stations were ever to be prime targets in a new war, we should have no need to worry: nobody would be able either to write and print the next edition of Hansard. It is a totally idle argument, brought in as the sort of thing that is discussed by people who do not know or have never been through a proper scenario of a Third World War.
I should have liked to see different questions put in the report which we are discussing. The kind of question I should think would be worth putting and answering is: Can high pressure tubing be made to withstand these temperatures at these pressures? We know—the American newspapers were full of the fact last week—that there have been leaks from the welds in the pipeline from the North-West part of the American conti
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nent. But I also happen to know that in the past three years a new pipe, a new alloy, has been devised which is not brittle at any of the temperatures which had to be dealt with up in Alaska. It is a great pity that that pipe was not available at the start. I was also told on the best authority that other Governments are already very interested in this pipe. But technology moves fast. I should have liked the Commission to ask where the better valves could be made, and for pressure vessel arguments to be settled by the Royal Commission as it is claimed it had made a complete inquiry. I should have liked it to go properly into the vitrification process for the disposal of waste and to have told us where those people who are working on the subject are being —I was about to say defective in their operations; that is to say, not as urgent, to use the word used by the noble Baroness, Lady White, in her speech. Those are the kind of questions that I should have liked answered—
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, why does the noble Lord think that the Royal Commission should have gone into pressure vessel safety when the subject has just been dealt with exhaustively by some other authority?
Lord ZUCKERMAN: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord. I did not quite hear his question.
Lord AVEBURY: Why does the noble Lord think that the Royal Commission should have gone into the subject of pressure vessel safety when the subject has just been dealt with exhaustively by another authority?
Lord ZUCKERMAN: For the reason that I was taught as an adviser in Government not to criticise unless I can put forward better suggestions than the points which I am criticising.
Despite all I have said, I hope that the recommendations of the report will be fully studied by Government. But there are some general comments that I should like to make arising from the point put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. The first is that it is far easier to generate fear in people's minds and hearts than it is to spread confidence. The word "nuclear" now spells disaster in the same

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way as the term "genetic engineering" is likely to do. There have been others like them before. It is easier—and here I regret very much one or two of the things said by the noble Baroness, Lady White—to deprecate than to praise official advisers. I do not remember all of the noble Baroness's remarks, but the Commission's official witnesses were accused of having rigid, closed minds, and so on. It is only too easy to criticise advisers in technical fields. Official advisers very rarely get blamed for policy mistakes, but when it comes to drugs, or agrochemicals, or nuclear matters, one turns immediately on an adviser if something goes wrong, and he gets no thanks when things go right. It is easier to ask for independent and authoritative supervisory bodies of experts than it is to find them. I do not know where they are. And if they were appointed I would put to your Lordships the proposition that it is likely that they would very soon become a bigger vested interest than those bodies whose work they would be supervising.
I found it shattering to read implied criticism of the Medical Research Council, on which the Government have to rely for so much, because of the veiled suggestion that it was in a sense prejudiced. I read in The Times the letter by Dr. Mole to which the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, referred in his opening address; I also read the reply. I then discovered in a copy of Nature that there was a letter, signed by two independent advisers consulted by the Royal Commission, together with two members of the Commission itself, dealing with the toxicity of plutonium. The Royal Commission found it necessary to seek the advice of independent authorities, but I read:
"We wish to make it clear that the two other signatories of this letter, who are members of the Commission, take full responsibility for Chapter II on radioactivity and radiobiology in the report. This was not seen by the consultants at any time prior to publication. In fact they disagreed with several of the statements made in the chapter".
If it was necessary to seek the advice of independent consultants only to reject that advice, why was it necessary to consult them in the first place? Why did the two members of the Commission not act on their own authority in the first instance?
Let me go on. I asked a question about the Windscale breakout. I understand a
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Statement—I saw a copy only this morning —has been put out giving the facts of the case. I am not interested in that. What I am interested in is the knowledge given me personally by one of the two or three technical members of the Royal Commission, and he has given me permission to quote his name—Sir Frederick Warner—that, in signing the report and in associating his name with paragraphs 422 to 424, he was doing so on the assumption that these would not be used in order to delay a decision about going ahead on Windscale. That is a remarkable thing. He went out of his way to send this letter to me, and I believe that another Member of your Lordships' House also has a copy—
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for a moment? I am sure that he wants to be fair on this matter. I too have a letter from Sir Frederick Warner. But there was nothing in the paragraphs to which he referred which would necessarily cause any delay in making the decision.
Lord ZUCKERMAN: My Lords, I would agree with the noble Baroness that a close reading of those paragraphs does not necessarily give any reason to delay, but Sir Frederick Warner saw in what happened that these paragraphs were being used to justify delay. As we now know, the application has been called in.
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, I am quite sure the noble Lord would agree that he could not possibly blame the Royal Commission for that.
Lord ZUCKERMAN: My Lords, I would agree with the noble Baroness. I do not blame the Royal Commission for the use that was made of its text; but, as I said earlier on, its text does seem to be susceptible to different interpretations. As I have said, I have no views as a nuclear technologist—I am not a nuclear technologist or a nuclear expert in any way; I am not a resources wizard, and I accept all the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton. But I can claim to have had some useful experience as an adviser on scientific matters, and to have some knowledge of certain disastrous decisions in which I, too, have been involved, and less experience, if I may say, about really wise decisions. The late Mr. Crossman, in the second volume of his memoirs, says at

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one point, when talking about a certain missile we were then developing and which has since more or less disappeared:
"How can Cabinet come to a sensible decision when no one of us has the vaguest idea what these things really are?
That was a very honest and true remark. I know it is a very difficult task for Cabinet Ministers to come to decisions on matters which they do not understand technically.
I am not surprised that the report we are discussing was well received by the Friends of the Earth. I hope, as I said, that it will be equally well studied by the Government from the point of view of seeing whether any of the recommendations can be put to use. I regret, as I have said, the things which have been said about official advisers; and I would suggest to the Government Front Bench that before the Government decide entirely about these matters they should wait until the appearance of the two American reports to which I have referred, one of which, I am assured, is due to come out in the relatively near future. These are highly professional studies. They compare nuclear hazards with those hazards of extensive coalmining—environmental and health hazards—and discuss how a possible nuclear catastrophe is to be measured against the cumulative disasters in the coalmining industry.
In conclusion, may I say that I had the privilege of giving the Romanes Address in Oxford two years ago. I did not read it again until I started getting ready for this debate on the plane coming back from the States two days ago. What I said there is relevant, I think:
"No one claims … that the body of government scientists necessarily includes the best scientists or the wisest men in the land … From the point of view of the scientist's responsibility to those whom he advises, it is essential that there should be total frankness, not only about the known, but also about the unknown issues which might affect major government policies".
I went on to say:
"There is … no advantage to the official scientist if he takes too exaggerated or sanguine a view about the successful outcome of some major project which depends on the technical solution of critical issues, whether we are dealing with solar energy"—
to which reference has been made—
"nuclear power stations, or some new aircraft";
and I went on to say that it would be a good thing if Government Departments
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which are concerned with technical matters had available, not only ordinary Press officers but bureaux of scientific information which could be consulted by journalists and others in confidence, so that knowledge could be shared and issues about which there were differences of opinion could be properly discussed.
My Lords, I hope that that last suggestion, which I put out a couple of years ago, and which got nowhere, is considered. I have spoken at length. But I think the report deserves a long speech. I have indicated why I think it should be studied by the Government. I have also indicated my views about certain of its shortcomings and some of its more naï ve statements. May I here, unfortunately, make the same apologies which Lord Wynne-Jones had to make at the end of his contribution; namely, that I may not be able to hear the end of this debate.
3.14 p.m.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, and delighted that we have had the opportunity of this debate through the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, and that we have had this report. I find this to be one of the most important documents we have had in my experience in the postwar world; because it is, whatever the critics may say, bringing us face to face with issues which, if they were not discussed in the terms and in the depth of the report, would be ignored or would be treated merely as the aborations of people like myself.
Your Lordships will find on page 82 of the report Alvin Weinberg's proposals for a "nuclear priesthood". Alvin Weinberg, I should remind your Lordships, was at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the key scientists in the production of the atom bomb and is still one of the greatest authorities in the nuclear field. His nuclear priesthood would be a dedicated, self-perpetuating body of people forming a technological elite which would be entrusted, through the generations to come, with the task of safeguarding them from the hazards of nuclear power.
The suggestion conjured up in my mind a bizarre picture of the monks of the Order of Pluto assembling 24,000 years (a thousand generations) from now, for the

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rituals celebrating the first half-life of man-made plutonium. That is the time-scale we are talking about: as far into the future as CroMagnon man is in our past. That is the extent by which we have taken into our hands or manifested in our generation the potentials of man's capacity to determine and risk future generations.
I am intrigued by his idea of a priest craft, for I have maintained for the last 30 years that we are wrestling with nuclear superstition; and understandably so. In 1958, I was a member of the World Health Organisation Study Group on the mental aspects of the peaceful uses of atomic energy. We considered reports, from inquries not only among scientists and people working in the atom industries and not only from the advance countries but in primitive societies and we concluded that our vaunted civilisation was only eggshell thick. We were cowering in the dark caves of our own emotions like our eldest ancestors cowering from the wrath of the elemental gods. But our elemental gods were radioactive, unseen, untasted, unheard, unsmelt and unfelt and all-pervasive. Nuclear energy had exploded as a cataclysmic bomb contrived behind the sky-high fences of military security.
The noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, has cited the case that I was going to cite where the horrifying truth emerged from Clement Attlee. I will quote it in deference to the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman. Clement Attlee said after the decision, long after the decision, to agree to drop the bomb on Hiroshima:
"We knew nothing whatever at that time about the genetic effects of an atomic explosion. We knew nothing at all about fallout and all the rest of what emerged after Hiroshima. As far as I know, President Truman and Winston Churchill knew nothing of those things either: nor did Sir John Anderson who co-ordinated research on our side. Whether the scientists directly concerned knew or guessed I do not know, but if they did then, as far as I am aware, they said nothing to those who took the decisions."
That is incredible. The more so, because in 1927 Herman Muller had already demonstrated the effects of radiation on genes, the factors of heredity for which he was later to receive a Nobel Prize. Radioactive mutation was already text-book stuff but none of those associated with the bomb regarded it as anything but "just a bigger bomb", in Attlee's phrase. It was a physicist's bomb and biologists were, by security, excluded from it.
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The only way to rebut nuclear superstition and irrational fears is by reason and by rational argument. But what happens when the repositories of reason, the scientists and the official experts are not believed or when they prevaricate or when they temper facts to suit official policies and with all deference to—I was going to say my noble friend—my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, it is true and absolutely manifestly true that we have been systematically misled by official advisers over the years. This is demonstrable. It has been true unfortunately that during the past 30 years—and the Windscale incident has recently emphasised what I am saying—official spokesmen, including famous and reputable scientists, have gone on record to reassure the public by minimising hazards and have been proved wrong.
In this House, the late Lord Cherwell, defending atmospheric bomb testing, compared the radiation from bomb fallout with the natural cosmic rays and said that the comparative amounts were no greater than walking 200 feet up a hill into cosmic rays. Then radio-strontium came tumbling out of the sky, into babies' milk and children's bones to the measureable concern of the Medical Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, and elsewhere. Any why? Because not only the late Lord Cherwell but one of the world's greatest radio isotope experts, Willard J. Libby, had fooled us. I mean fooled me as well because I was present at the Press conference. Libby, who gave us carbondating (which has proved that Winchester's round table is not King Arthur's Round Table after all) was a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission when it started testing the H-bomb. He was the only scientific member of that Commission. He gave a categorical assurance that the only fallout would be from the fission-bomb detonator of the H-bomb and would be confined in a test area. The theory was that the massive explosion from the hydrogen fusion reaction would punch a hole in the stratosphere where radio active gases would dissipate and carry away the radiostrontium of the bomb denotator. It also left out the fact that one of the gases would quickly decay into radiostrontium which is a particulate. It also left out of the account the fact that the troposphere which separates the

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stratosphere from our atmosphere is not continuous, as we were told, and that the radiostrontium came in through a fan-light to get back into our climatic jet stream and was spread all over the world. I found it difficult not to interrupt the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, when he was invoking Teller as part of his justification, and using much the same analogy; that is, that what we are talking about is no different from being hit by a meteorite. This is something I will not stand for—or for which I will not stand.
I want to follow the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, and others in saying something which is categorically true. The nuclear industry has been the safest of all industries. It has the best accident record of any industry. But why? Because of nuclear superstition; because we had a public opinion, view, dread or misgiving which insisted all these years ago in building into the terms of the hazards the safeguards which I am prepared to admit are probably excessive now, but I would not give up one of them except by a fight. What we have done is simply because we have this sense of the unseen, the untasted and the unsmelt, and we have provided in the nuclear industry the kind of safeguards about which we are now boasting.
Sometimes, the experts are less than candid. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, in saying that we often criticise them without reason, or with good reason; that is to say, the famous story of Senator Muskie in the U.S. Senate Commission. He had one scientist after another coming in saying, "On the one hand, so and so; on the other hand, so and so". Senator Muskie said, "For God's sake send us a one-armed scientist".
In that sense, there has to be a balance. On the other hand, I accuse them of being less than candid. They have been often constrained—I will say it again—to be dishonest in the sense that what they are withholding is something which would affect the policies they have been called upon to defend. I would condone nuclear superstition on the very ground I am citing now, because you cannot rebut superstition except by producing rational answers. You cannot complain that people are stupid, silly or fearful
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if they are ignorant. You cannot get their support unless you inform them; and trouble has arisen throughout the whole history of siting reactors, and so on, because of the fact that people who may be affected by the building of a new reactor are entitled to be reassured. Very many times in the experience of many of us, the experts have failed to articulate what might have been a perfectly good case. People must be properly informed. They must not be just blandly reassured—because they will not accept that reassurance.
Your Lordships will notice in the report a very proper concern and suggestions about the disposal of radioactive waste, with a preference for deep burial in granitic formations. Now, the authorities are looking for possible sites, apparently in Galloway and the Western Isles. In the small hours of yesterday morning in another place that issue was raised under the Consolidated Fund Bill. It was raised by perfectly reasonable people. Is that nuclear superstition? No. It represents a proper demand for the what, the why and the wherefore of what is going on. You cannot expect people to accept something they do not understand; and no matter whether they live in Galloway or anywhere else, they have to know the facts. That is where the communications have broken down over all these years.
The Royal Commission was right, in spite of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, and the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, to involve itself in questions of nuclear sabotage, guerrilla risks and nuclear blackmail. All of them are appallingly feasible. The only reticence one should exercise is when one starts putting ideas into people's heads—and I could put plenty! With all due deference to the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, it is not science fiction. It has been demonstrated in America how casual has been the approach to the handling and the accessibility of fissile material. In one installation, exposed in Science Magazine, no more than rabbit wire was used—you needed only a pair of clippers and you could go and help yourself. The bomb is no longer that top secret for which, for exposing it, the Rosenbergs were sent to the electric chair. It is not a kitchen-table-in-Clapham device. Determined people can and often do get the

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knowledge, but short of making a bomb—you do not even have to make one—the evidence of having the capacity and the materials would be blackmail enough to hijack a community.
That is one of the reasons why the proliferation of plutonium has properly exercised the Royal Commission. In a way, I am committed to the fast breeder reactor. In the early 'sixties, I called it "the pixilated pile" and compared it to the pixies filling the coal-scuttle every time you stoked the fire. That is what it is—a process of producing more fuel than you consume. I still think that, until you have fusion energy, this is the neatest form—or, as the scientist would say, it is a beautiful form—of fission reaction. But, none the less, in spite of my precedent, I go along with the report in its reservations about the fast breeder and the whole question of the plutonium economy.
I want to say this, because I seem to remember, when I was writing about this all those years ago, that we were talking about using thorium as the blank for the breeder, and in this case we would be converting thorium into Uranium 233. Uranium 233 is degradable, recoverable or treatable in a way that plutonium, with its half-life, certainly is not. I am just wondering why we have lost sight of that. All I know is that when we are talking about plutonium, we are talking about the most deadly poison known to man.
That brings me to the projected nuclear development, with which the report deals so effectively on pages 72 and 73. We are told that the amount of plutonium involved in the AEA programme would increase from a little over 10 tonnes in 1975 to about 250 tonnes by the year 2000, and to perhaps 10 times that figure by the year 2030. This would be accompanied by the movements of plutonium between facilities, which would number several hundreds per year by the year 2000, and several thousands by the year 2030. In the next 25 years, the amount of radioactive wastes stored in liquid form, but intensively radioactive and continuing so for centuries—radioactive in the sense that it has to be kept practically refrigerated or chilled, to prevent it from boiling and so on—will occupy a volume of 6,000 cubic metres.
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But radiation hazard is not a parochial question. It can affect peoples remote from the epicentres of nuclear power. It has been projected that by the year 2020 in the United States there could be the equivalent of 2,000 large reactors, most of them breeder reactors, and that would involve something like 60 fuel processing and fabrication plants, handling something like 30,000 tonnes of plutonium. This could involve about 100,000 shipments of plutonium annually, from one place to another, and that is a great many curies to have loose on the move.
The Royal Commission disavows all knowledge of the military dispositions of nuclear energy. This is discreet but, I respectfully suggest, disingenuous. The military dispositions are very much a question of the environment—and, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, totally so. A long way short of a nuclear holocaust, all the concern expressed about industrial uses applies manifold to the military. There is now stockpiled in the arsenals of the nuclear Powers, in terms of fissile materials, an estimated 100 tons of TNT equivalent for every man, woman and child on earth, which is capable of reducing the entire planet to a radioactive desert. To produce that military potential has meant radioactive wastes of the scale which we are projecting into the future. Fifteen years ago, in my book Living with the Atom. I pointed out that already, then, in the burial grounds at Hanford in the State of Washington, where millions of gallons of liquid wastes were boiling in stainless steel tanks, it had cost as much to bury the live atoms as it cost to bury all the dead Pyramid Kings of Egypt. The transport of fissile materials about which we are agitating takes place, in military terms, all the time and in fabricated forms.
The United States has 30,000 nuclear weapons, 8,000 of which are strategical and 22,000 tactical. Of the tactical, 7,000 are in Europe. These latter represent 20 times the total ordnance employed in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam war. The Soviet Union's tactical nuclear weapons in Europe are estimated conservatively at 3,500. So there are 10,500 tactical nuclear weapons—a nuclear minefield—and the smallest have an explosive power equivalent to 1,000 tons of chemical explosive while the largest

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have an explosive power of more than 1 million tons equivalent.
One of the points I wish to stress is that it is estimated that nearly 120,000 persons have access to United States' nuclear weapons and weapons-grade fissionable materials. A Congressional inquiry has recently shown that 3,647 persons with access to nuclear weapons were removed from their jobs during a single year—that is, 1974—because of mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse or breach of discipline. I hate to make your Lordships' flesh creep, but we are speaking here about a potential of access, in terms of the distribution of weapons, which makes minute whatever we are speaking about regarding safeguards at Windscale. But we are forewarned. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, who said, with justification, that what we did in terms of application of foresight in the nuclear industry can apply also to security. But we have to know about it; it is no good running away. I am grateful to the Royal Commission for drawing attention to this point in their report and for making us aware of it, even if it makes us jump out of our seats and not sleep very well at night.

WINDSCALE: NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT INQUIRY
3.38 p.m.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, with the leave of the House, T will now repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. I am sure that noble Lords will be pleased that I am able to repeat the Statement during our debate this afternoon and that through the usual channels it was arranged that it should be made today in the other place in order to enable noble Lords to hear it before the Recess. The Statement is as follows:
"On 3rd November I undertook to report further to the House on the planning application from British Nuclear Fuels Limited for further development at Windscale, which the Planning Committee of the Cumbrian County Council had referred to me.
"The application falls effectively into 3 parts:
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first, improved arrangements for handling and reprocessing irradiated Magnox fuel; second, development of a pilot demonstration plant for vitrifying long-lived radioactive waste, and, third, new facilities for reprocessing oxide fuel from the current generation of United Kingdom Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors and from overseas.
"I have received many representations that the proposals in the application should be allowed to go ahead at once and I have received many other representations that the matters involved are of such national importance that the application ought not to be decided without full public scrutiny.
"I have now made a thorough examination of all the issues involved. If proposals relating to the handling of Magnox fuel and the development of the vitrification plant on the lines I have already seen were all that were before me, I would be unlikely to see any justification for calling these in for my own decision. That part relating to the reprocessing of Magnox fuel is designed to improve the treatment of the fuel already at Windscale with a consequent improvement of the discharges. The vitrification plant is part of the research programme into the disposal of a long-lived highly radioactive waste on which the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in their 6th Report urged the Government to press ahead. Any discharges of radioactive material arising as a result of these proposals will be closely controlled under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960, and I intend to be personally assured that high standards of control are maintained at all times. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy has also indicated similar intentions in respect of his responsibilities under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.
"The third proposal on the other hand which is concerned with the reprocessing of oxide fuel raises different issues of major importance. Since I have no power to call in this one part of a single application, and since I wish to avoid delay to the other proposals I have decided, to invite BNFL to bring their proposals for-ward in separate parts. If and when a

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separate application is submitted for the oxide fuel reprocessing plant I would propose to call it in to deal with myself and order a public inquiry under Section 282 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. This will enable all the relevant safety environmental and planning considerations fully to be examined. It is my hope that the inquiry should proceed as speedily as it can.
"The wide-ranging environmental implications relating to the development of nuclear power generally, which were the subject of the 6th Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, are under urgent examination and the Government will be making their views on these matters known in due course".
3.41 p.m.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness most particularly for having made it possible for this House to have this Statement at this juncture. I am not getting at her personally, but of course it would have been better if we could have had it yesterday before we wasted a certain amount of time—if I may put it that way—on noble Lords such as Lord Avebury raising the issue here today. However, I know that she personally has had a hand in seeing that we have now had the statement. The Statement may well say that these matters are under urgent review: they are under review to a certain extent here, now, and I hope the Government will take note of what is being said here.
It seems to be a sensible approach to have separated the various aspects of the Windscale expansion because it is indeed true that there is only the one contentious issue; that is, the proposal to process fuel virtually as an export operation, which clearly this country does not have to do, whether it wishes to do it or not. Most of the other issues are an improvement over what we are doing already, if I understand it correctly. I am bound to say that I cannot really see how the Government could have avoided calling in that particular part of the planning application.
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In passing, may I say that it seems a pity that we could not have separated out these proposals long since. I think a good deal of the controversy which has arisen out of all of this would have been lessened if these things had been packaged in this way right from the outset, but maybe that is being wise after the event. Secondly, I should like to ask a question which I am sure is very much in the minds of some of those who wish to protest against this. Would it be in order at that inquiry to raise the question of the need for these processes at all?—because this is an issue which continually arises both in regard to highway planning and this type of planning application. So I ask this quite specific question without asking the noble Baroness to give us a major policy statement. Otherwise I am sure this is an approach which is worthy of our support.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, is the Minister aware that we too very much welcome the statement that has been made. We agree that it is a good idea to separate out the application on the reprocessing of magnox fuels and the vitrification process from that relating to the reprocessing of oxide fuels: Can the noble Baroness give us an assurance that as a result of the approval of the first two parts of the application there will be no increase in the authorised limit in regard to discharges, both into the atmosphere and into the sea? Can she also say whether, in considering the application, the Secretary of State will take into account the recent developments in the United States of America regarding the interpretation of the non-proliferation treaty which I mentioned earlier? Will the noble Baroness also consider whether Sections 47 to 50 of the Town and Country Planning Act would not have been a more appropriate procedure than Section 282? I will not go into that in detail, because I have already dealt with it in my speech.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, for his comments. This was a very difficult problem which needed a great deal of consideration since, in the first place, it was all part of the Development Plan of the Cumbria County Council. It was not really possible to separate it in the way the noble Lord suggested

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before. I think he is quite right when he says it is easy to be wise after the event over these particular things.
Both noble Lords, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, and Lord Avebury, raised the question of what it would be in order to raise at the inquiry. As noble Lords will appreciate, it will be an inquiry into a specific planning application. Obviously, the inquiry would take account of all matters relevant to that but, as in other similar inquiries such as highway inquiries, as the noble Lord pointed out, it would be up to the inspector as to what is and is not relevant. I cannot anticipate what issues will come before him, but I imagine the inquiry will range as widely as the inspector will allow. I should also point out that, in order to expedite matters, both myself and my right honourable friend think it would be a good idea for objectors to start preparing their case now, in the event of BFNL putting in an application.
On the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, from my understanding there would be no increase in discharges so far as the two parts of the application are concerned, if they come in separately. That is as far as I understand the matter. If I am wrong, I will let the noble Lord know. This does take us into a rather scientific area. So taking into account what is published in the United States, again this would depend on what was put in, and the way it was put in to the inspector by the objectors or by the applicants. It would have to come to the inquiry. There would not be an inquiry whose terms of reference set out that the inquiry should take into account any particular thing happening in the United States.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, surely the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, would agree that the non-proliferation treaty and the interpretation of it are beyond the competence of any inspector?
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I think the noble Lord has answered his own question. I have explained that this is a planning inquiry, and that what will come out of it will probably range rather beyond that. I am certainly not going to undertake that this inquiry will be dealing with non-proliferation. It would be quite wrong if
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I gave any undertaking to that effect. That is not what the inquiry is about.
On the other point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, as to why the inquiry was not held under Sections 47 to 50, the Planning Inquiry Commission, the main reason is that the Government are concerned that the inquiry should proceed as quickly as possible. The other form of Commission is an untried procedure. It really does not seem likely that it would secure an early report, because it has to be done in two stages, which would prolong the whole inquiry. The Government are trying to find a way of dealing with the grave problem that has arisen and the representations made, and at the same time the Government are trying not to force too much delay in the interests of all sides.

NUCLEAR POWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
3.49 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Lord McNAIR: My Lords, like other speakers, I wish to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, on having initiated a fascinating debate. Although I think that probably I disagree with his conclusions, I would pay tribute to the extremely balanced way in which he stated the problem. I was particularly fascinated by his use of the word "robust" to describe the action of the voters in California in deciding to discount the dangers and to go "full speed ahead"."Robust" is just about the last word I would have chosen to describe their behaviour, and I was still intermittently musing over this word when up stood the noble Baroness, Lady White, and made a speech which epitomised exactly what I regard as a robust attitude towards this problem.
We are very fortunate in having so many noble Lords who can understand and explain the technicalities of this problem. My chief regret on that score is the absence from the speaker's list of the name of the noble Lord, Lord Roths-child, because it was his arresting article in The Times of 27th September which first persuaded me that I owed it to my grandchildren, if not to myself, to read

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the Flowers Report. I envy the noble Lord, Lord Tedder, who found it racy. I found it extremely heavy going, but I read every single word of it, though large chunks, particularly near the beginning, for all they meant to me might just have well have been written in Sanskrit. It would, I am sure, have been impeccable Sanskrit because the report is, if I may say so, outstandingly well-written.
I am acutely aware that against the galactic blaze of scientific and academic talent which we have I represent something of a black hole. Knowing just enough physics to enable me occasionally to boil an egg, I will keep, of necessity, to the broader political and human aspects of this problem. I should like to remind the House, though I am sure it is quite unnecessary, that the problem which faces the Government or some future Government of this country is only a small part, a very small part, of a global problem which confronts the whole of the endangered species to which we happen to belong. In its implications it is not a short-term problem of 50 or 100 years. The time-scale is geological rather than historical. To say that we have not very much experience of facing, let alone solving, problems of this order of magnitude is something of an understatement. We are not often asked, as it were, to construct a graph of which one axis represents time stretching for practical purposes into eternity, while the other has to embrace and allow for all the needs and greeds and hopes and fears of humanity.
Perhaps I should at this point assure the House that I shall soon be changing to a slightly more sanguine key. To make matters worse, mankind has to set out on this expedition into the unknown, untrodden territory of a possibly plutonium-based world economy from a highly insecure base and in a state of sorry disorganisation. We live, do we not, in a Balkanised world, with 150 separate sovereign States, each with its own Government, most of them tryannical and unconstrained by the brake of public opinion, and every single one of them ultimately prepared to take any action, no matter how insane, in what it conceives to be its national interest. In parenthesis, I wish someone could tell me the half-life of this inherently unstable element which
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we call "national sovereignty". It is a fairly recent phenomenom. It certainly will not last for ever. To use one of the thought provoking terms which I have learnt from the Flowers Report, I should dearly like to know what some of its decayed daughters are going to look like.
After that I hope not wholly irrelevant digression let us cluster round our parish pump and examine our own small fraction of the sum of this puzzle. We in these islands amount to just under 1½ per cent. of the human race. In that figure you may find fuel both for pride and for humility. There was a remarkable time when we were able, despite our numerical insignificance, to act as the world's policeman. From that role we have been decisively pensioned off by history. Perhaps sacked would be a better word since history does not award many pensions.
Either way our fairly honourable discharge from that role has obliged us to look for another. We are often told—and I am not qualified to dispute it even if I wished to—that in the field of technology and inventiveness we still have much to contribute. I hope that this is true. I hope that we shall make that contribution, but I do not think that it is enough. I do not think that it is enough, because it seems to me to ignore and possibly to aggravate what I suspect is one of the major defects in our human nature; namely, that our cleverness is very apt to outrun our wisdom. Like precocious children we give ourselves expensive toys which we are not really ready for. We start them up without having first carefully read the instructions, and then we are surprised when they go wrong, and very lucky if they do not blow up in our faces.
So should we not, therefore, in addition to any contributions we can make to the pool of the world's technology and invention, hope also to make a balancing contribution—I will not say to the world's conscience; that would be I think an insufferably pretentious way of putting it—to its overstrained reserves of judgment, foresight, and imagination. To put that in more concrete terms, it seems that we need to pit the skills and aspirations of the Department of Energy against the necessarily broader views of the Department of the Environment, and then to sum up the argument not as politicians, but as statesmen.

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One difficulty in speaking about this subject is that whatever one wants to say Sir Brian Flowers has said it better already. I therefore quote from Paragraph 524:
"The ultimate aim is clear; it is to enable decisions on major questions of nuclear development to take place by explicit political process."
How can we make sure that we do make these decisions by explicit political process? I ask this question because I have, for a long time, been haunted—in fact I suspect I shall go to my grave still haunted—by the belief that at least on one occasion of supreme importance we may have failed our fellow men by missing a great and non-recurring opportunity.
Between 20 and 30 years ago there was a short period of years during which we alone in the world, apart from the United States and the USSR, had what the jargonauts called "nuclear capacity". What might the response have been if at that time we had said to the rest of the world, "We are prepared to divest our-selves of this capacity. We will throw all our stuff away—you can come and look to make sure we have—if you will bind yourselves with us in a solemn treaty never to make or acquire nuclear weapons. Let us leave them to the two super-Powers which we cannot influence." I have, of course, somewhat simplified the proposition, but what would the response have been? I believe—no man can prove me wrong, or right—that it might have been in the affirmative. We stood a little higher then in world esteem; they had not quite lost the habit of listening to what we said.
If we had met with such a response to that offer, will anyone dispute that we might today be living in a safer world, instead of having to make do with a non-proliferation treaty which half the relevant States have neither signed nor ratified and from which any one can quit by giving three months' notice? If the offer had been turned down we should have lost nothing, yet it was never made. Was it even considered? I have no idea. It was all shrouded—that could be a very appropriate word—in security and secrecy; in other words, there was no explicit, political process.
I introduce the topic of that last opportunity, now alas! purely hypothetical, because it is just possible that when this debate is over—I do not mean your Lordships' debate, but the wider one for
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which the Minister has so encouragingly called—we may find ourselves with a similar opportunity, a chance to invite mankind to stop and look ahead and think before plumping for plutonium.
It may not seem like it to your Lord-ships, but I have left out much of what I should have liked to say. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Avebury is right to challenge the whole concept of the energy gap. After all, it is based on long-range forecasts; and surely we need no reminding of our fallibility in that respect. I am sometimes reminded by our touching faith in the clairvoyance of economists of the ancient Greeks, consulting their Oracle at Delphi, except that in some ways they were more sensible because they usually waited for events to develop before endeavouring to interpret the Oracle which had foretold them.
My noble friend also questioned the desirability of growth for growth's sake, and I support him. This idea of indefinitely sustained economic growth seems most unlikely to be attainable, even if it is desirable, because we will run out of all sorts of things other than energy. This has often been said, and recently by the Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Ryle, in The Times on 14th December. But is it even desirable? It must, I suggest, lead to a future state of affairs in this country which I would call hyper-industrialisation, and let us consider this for a moment.
If those with long memories will compare the Britain of 50 years ago with Britain today, remembering all the urbanisation, rural depopulation, spoliation of so much of the country and the manifest lowering of the average level of contentment—not of affluence but of contentment—and will then project forward another 50 years of the exponential growth of these tendencies, they will have a glimpse of what I mean by hyper-industrialisation. I ask whether that is what we want, but it does not really matter, or it ought not to matter, what we want because we shall not be around to enjoy or endure it. These are long term trends and "in the long run we are all dead". But, when Maynard Keynes said that, he would not have forgotten, because he was a very humane man, that though we should all be dead, a lot of other people would be trying to live in whatever world we had left them. It is what they will want that matters.

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Perhaps the best we can do is to consult our children and grandchildren. We should ask the young. I believe that there is already a lot of evidence that this is not the way they want things to go. Throughout this discussion, I cannot forget that we are preparing to make decisions not for ourselves but for posterity. Poor old posterity! It has no votes. It belongs to no union. It has no lobby. It lies utterly defenceless, at our mercies. I can think of no nobler role for this noble House to fill than to feel itself in part the guardian of posterity.
To conclude, I have admitted and no doubt demonstrated that I am a scientific illiterate. I would therefore not presume to tell the Department of Energy what to do. It occurs to me that the Energy Minister may well have the most unenviable job any British Minister has ever been landed with. He deserves our sympathy and, certainly, he has mine. However, even from abysmal ignorance, I hope that I am entitled to make three brief pleas. I plead first for the maximum delay to give research time, if it can, to solve the problem of radioactive waste disposal, and I plead for absolutely no commitment to fast breeder reactors until that problem has been solved, if indeed then. Secondly, I plead for the closest possible attention to the cautionary conclusions of the Flowers Report. Finally, I plead that we should remember that it is not we who will pay the bill if we get this wrong. Therefore, when by that explicit political process we finally have to make up our mind, for pity's sake! let us give posterity the benefit of any doubt there is.
4.10 p.m.
The Earl of HALSBURY: My Lords, in common with all other speakers in the debate, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, for giving us the opportunity to discuss the subject matter and to say that we are grateful to Sir Brian Flowers and the noble Baroness, Lady White, and their colleagues on the Royal Commission for a most interesting exposition. I thought it an excellent report, and such criticism as I have either read or heard seems only to embody the self-interest or hopes or fears of the critics. So far I have not listened to anybody saying what I would not suppose that he would say, anyway. My
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main anxiety when I read it is that it is such a wide ranging report. It covers so wide a field that by selective quotation from it one can substantiate almost any point of view at all. I think that this is what the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, meant when he quoted some of the Press comment as saying that it meant all things to all men.
Because I approached it in a sympathetic spirit it seemed to me that it was avoiding the complacency that would occur by selective quotation. There are two types. One is the type which says: "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? The Commission's report says that we are not going to need these power stations for a long time to come. We don't need to bother about the collapse of our fuel economy." It is going to collapse any-way, unless something is done about it. Just because we have a little more time that does not mean that time is on our side. It only means that the rate of running out would be slower.
The other type of complacency is to say "Oh, we will solve these problems as we go along. We do not need to have a solution to the disposal of high level wastes right here and now." Reading the report as a whole, it seems to avoid both of those forms of complacency, and to strike a realistic note. Fusion power if—I emphasise the "if"—it can be developed is clearly less dangerous than fission power, even if one accepts the tritium hazard. But can it be done? No one knows. Therefore it must be given a proper level of research priority. It must take its place in the queue, but it is not the only member of that queue.
If the European project finally collapses through the chauvinism of one member or another, the question of whether we could go it alone would of course be open. Culham is an international centre of excellence, respected everywhere. But the minimal Tokamak—I am quoting now from this week's or last week's New Scientist —has a thermal power level of 3,000 megawatts. So it is not going to cost less than a major nuclear power station. But whether we can go it alone I do not know—certainly not as long as we are living over our income on borrowed money. But if it fails, and it may, then the fast breeder is the fall-back, and there is nothing in the report which puts an

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embargo on the fast breeder. I really think that I must read this—recommendation 49:
"We do not oppose development of CFR 1 on environmental grounds … However, our views should be taken into account by the Government in reaching a decision."
Then they refer to their views in paragraph 520 which contains (i) and (ii) which I do not need to read, and then (iii) which states:
"If CFR 1 development proceeds, it should be seen as being in the nature of an insurance policy, albeit an expensive one, justified by the importance of risks relating to the security of the nation's future energy supplies."
It then goes on to refer to a type of public examination into these matters that it recommends.
So what are the priorities for the fast breeder reactor? We have priorities for the Tokamak and the fusion reactor, and we have priorities for the high level waste disposal. I do not think that one can assign these priorities in perpetuity. They change; knowledge advances; new difficulties are encountered. Priorities are always changing. They should be kept under a kind of running review. But I am perfectly certain that uprating the importance attached to fusion power and to high level waste disposal is quite correct as of today.
Here I must digress, if I may, to tell your Lordships a story of the late Sir Henry Tizard at a time when he was shattered by learning that the Russians had exploded a nuclear bomb years earlier than anybody had thought it possible. "I know", he said, "the cost in scientific effort of the joint AngloAmerican venture, and the enormous resources—100 Nobel Prize winners, and so on—that they had behind them. How can the Russians equal it?" Of course, the answer, we now know, was espionage on one side and treachery on the other. Dr. Perrin (later Sir Michael Perrin of the Wellcome Foundation), who was Tizard's assistant at the time, said, "Really? Do you think any local council in Russia can tell Joe Stalin, ' You cannot put that purification plant here, there or somewhere else'?" During the last war there was a song which said:
"You can't put that there 'ere.
Anywhere else you can put that there,
But you can't put that there 'ere".
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If that is to be allowed to be a reason for not having a purification plant anywhere, then anybody will say it; and sooner or later you have to have a mechanism for overruling bad reasons for not putting down purification plants, and so on.
It is said that the safest place for plutonium is inside a fast breeder reactor, where nobody can get at it. Plutonium on site is always either in the reactor or it is in pond, or it is in the purification plant or it is part of the stockpile, reprocessed and ready to be fed back into the reactor. Most of the plutonium in a fast breeder reactor is inside the reactor, and it can be balanced so that you do not accumulate a large stockpile. Some of the hazards can be overcome by a willingness to spend money. The first CFR could be built below ground—it is only a matter of money—and you could run it much closer to the danger point underground, knowing that the thing could be contained, to gain experience on it. Then, if all went well and whatever happened was contained, you would know that it would be safe to run it at ground level at lower levels of activity.
Here I want to pause to make sure that I have correctly understood something said by the noble Lord, Lord Hinton. If I am misquoting him, of course I will withdraw, but as I understood it he said that a fast breeder reactor had an inherent stability about it. I am the last person in the world to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, in a matter where he knows so much more than I do, but that is not what I have read elsewhere. It is not what I have read, I think, in the report, though I could not turn it up at short notice. It could have been in some textbooks that I have been reading lately. The statement in the report, I think, is that thermal reactors are intrinsically safe because under their working conditions they are at their most reactive, but a breeder reactor has the difficulty that it is not at its most reactive under its working conditions, and can run away. The report and the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, cannot both be right, and there must be some means of resolving it. Does the noble Lord wish to intervene?
Lord HINTON of BANKSIDE: Indeed, my Lords, if the noble Earl wishes me to. It is in fact wrong to say that most thermal reactors have inherent stability. The fast reactor with a mixed

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plutonium-uranium fuel has inherent stability because as the temperature rises the neutron cross-section increases and there is more neutron absorption. This gives it inherent stability if it has a plutonium-uranium fuel.
The Earl of HALSBURY: My Lords, I am greatly obliged to the noble Lord for telling me something that I have been trying to find out ever since I visited the Dounreay reactor and was told that the designers were in great difficulties in trying to build a negative temperature coefficient into it. Ever since, whenever I have come across fast breeder reactor people I have said, "Have you got a negative temperature coefficient yet?"—and at last I have got a straight answer from the noble Lord. They have, and I think they are to be congratulated on doing so.
I deal next with the transport. The word "pig" has many connotations. It can be a source of delicious roast pork; it can be an ingot of foundry-iron; it can be a male chauvinist. But the pig which I wish to introduce to your Lordships this afternoon is a device used in petroleum engineering and gasworks engineering. It is simply an egg-shaped object that you blow down a pipeline either to clear it or to separate two brands of petroleum fuel and it ends up in a "pig trap" where it can be launched on another journey if necessary. There is no reason why we should not have a submarine pipeline and blow the reactor elements through the pipeline to the processing plant. They go down into the earth—thence "sub-marine"—at one point and they come up at another. If a saboteur tried to cut the line, you could make a fall in the pressure at the downstream end and operate a relay cutting off the source of pressure and the "pigs" will stop.
It is not the responsibility of the Royal Commission on the Environment to find solutions to these problems but, being an enthusiastic technologist, whenever I come across these difficulties I always want to postulate a solution. If you are really afraid of plutonium being hijacked, then you must pay for the solution. Although a pipeline from, say, Bradwell to Windscale might be expensive, the contents could not be hijacked.
We come now to waste disposal. I do not mean long-term storage. I am talking
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about the words of "Tosti's Farewell": "Farewell forever; good-bye, good-bye! It must disappear from the human environment altogether. Before reading the report I had already disposed in my own mind of a number of suggestions which it took into consideration for the reasons that it had rejected them, but I did come up with an idea of my own which on investigation turned out to be a combination of two other ideas which had been tried separately but not in combination. It occurred to me that if an almost total stranger to this subject like myself could cook up something on the spur of the moment, something that was not in the report and has not been considered, apparently, by anyone, then the subject itself has not been fully explored in depth. Until we are agreed on how to get rid of this stuff finally, we must face the problem of storage; and vitrification is better than solution in a liquid. It must be so. Anybody would prefer storing solids rather than liquids. This brings me to the expansion at Windscale in a spirit of facing real dangers and not running away from imaginary ones.
During the 25 years while plutonium has been processed at Windscale, let us look at what has happened to the nation in terms of the accident rate quoted in the report: 625,000 people have died through accidents of all kinds; 62,500 from natural leukaemia, 40,000 in industrial accidents (that is part of the 625,000) and as many by drowning, usually through bathing in places where they are warned not to bathe; 625 have been struck by lightning. During the same period no certain death of any radiation worker from radiation can be agreed. Whether there is a small statistically significant increase in leukaemia by people who worked at Windscale is not known because the Commission criticises the methodology used. Until the records have been revamped we cannot know that for certain; but no certain death from radiation of any radiation worker has occurred during the period when all these thousands of other accidents happened. It can be made safe, evidently.
With regard to the famous leakage, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, or the noble Baroness, Lady White, got a circular from British Nuclear Fuels Limited to all Members of

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Parliament headed, "Radioactive Contamination, Windscale". If they did, did they read it or did it go into the WPB, or did they not realise that it was a part of their essential homework or what? It gives a full account of the whole matter which really ends up in a not unprecedented bit of self-advertisement by the Minister. But it is difficult for your Lordships to take in a leakage of 1,000 curies, which is what has happened. I have made a calculation so that you may know just how much natural radioactivity that represents. It is the natural radioactivity, give or take a factor of two, depending upon the origins of the soil, distributed over 8,000 acres of farmland three feet deep. It is not a leakage that is large on the scale on which normal radioactivity is distributed over the earth if you wanted to dispose of it. Too much has been made of this.
I am told that the total storage of high level waste at Windscale—the volume of it—is about that of a suburban detached house, considerably smaller than the Jewel House at the Tower of London. There is no great difficulty in keeping it under watch and guard and monitoring what is going on. Obviously, Windscale is the proper place to process fuel. You have the knowledge, technique and people there. There are young people who are the children of those who were early workers at Windscale. They are joining the organisation now and there are a whole lot of natural skills in handling dangerous materials safely which arc building up exactly as the skills required to make lace at Nottingham and cutlery and alloy steels in Sheffield were built up. If they have this technique, I cannot see any reason why they should not export it.
The only way to get something done is to make it someone's whole-time responsibility to do it. The problem of fitting a waste disposal unit into the command structure of the national organisation is solved in the report by proposing that it should be given independent statutory responsibility. I see no reason not to accept this recommendation. The report would be unintelligible without the explanatory chapters on radioactivity, fission, fusion, reactor design, waste purification and so on. They constitute one of the best written expositions of the subject
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since the celebrated Smyth Report in 1945, which was the American Government's introduction to the American public on the whole subject of nuclear fission, the bomb and so on.
From the standpoint of the Royal Commission, it was a mere means to an end. It was only to make the rest of it intelligible to the lay reader. For this reason, it is not complete. There are many matters not contained in it because they were not necessary: for example, the control of criticality in processing plants. I hope that the noble Baroness will in her reply be sympathetic towards the suggestion that the Government should commission a work written by a first-class scientific journalist with access to all the sources of information in the Atomic Energy Authority as a vade-mecum for everybody in this field. Much more information could be released than is being released. Our enemies seem to have most of it by one means or another. It should be intelligent to the layman and also interesting to the unspecialist scientist like myself, who is not an expert in these matters.
I should like to reinforce what the noble Lord, Lord Aldington, said, possibly because, like him, I have a commercial interest in building nuclear power stations. The programme for nuclear power, which was shot down by Sir Brian Flowers and his colleagues, would have been a perfectly impossible programme for British industry to have achieved. It was totally unrealistic. My Lords, I think the noble Baroness, Lady White, said something.
Baroness WHITE: I beg your pardon; I was merely murmering to myself. Why was it then ever put forward?
The Earl of HALSBURY: I do not know, my Lords. I must ask the noble Baroness to be responsible for her source material. As to explosions, explosions have taken place inside concrete containers and have been contained. An explosion inside a vessel is very much worse than an explosion outside. If they can contain explosions inside themselves, surely they ought to be able to control explosions outside themselves. I have forgotten who made that point, but I would entirely agree with it. We must not get too oppressed with the idea of toxicity on very small scales. One of the most dangerous

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substances is one that you carry about in your petrol tanks every day, lead tetraethyl. It is oil soluble: one drop on your skin and it gets into the myelin sheath and into your principal nerves: it migrates up them into the brain and you can die of lead encephalitis—and that is from one drop on the skin. Botulinum toxin is lethal in doses of one microgramme per kilo of body weight, and so on.
I have one last point to add. We must legislate for the possible collapse of our civilisation. Civilisations have collapsed before. I have no very great optimism about the stability of ours. Egypt had three dark ages from the pyramids to the time when it was overwhelmed by the Persian Empire. Greece had a Dark Age between the end of the Mycenean and the beginning of the Classical civilisation —a couple of hundred years of anarchy. when Justinian shut down the Law Schools and the Academy in Athens, we had 500 years of barbarism in Western Europe to follow before the renascence of Western civilisation. I do not know how many Dark Ages they have had in China and I shall not try to enumerate them. But, my Lords, we must not leave rubbish around for posterity. because people will not know how to cope with it. If there is a leak of something stored at Windscale now we know how to cope with it, but once our civilisation has collapsed, all kinds of dangerous things could happen. Somebody might break open a pile, get at the fuel elements and start putting them into drinking water. We must get rid of it, and so I should like to say one final thing.
I believe that we are descended remotely from a migratory wandering species that just wandered about the face of the earth. It left its droppings and its food refuse, if one might mention this, lying about on its camp site and then moved on; and then nature took charge under aerobic conditions. The dung beetles, the ants and bacteria got together and cleaned up the mess. The result is that we, as a species, have evolved with no natural instinct for tidyness and cleanliness. But what we have not got by instinct we can induce as a matter of intellectual or aesthetic conviction. The old tendency to untidyness and dirt still continues: it continues within the sacrosanct periphery of the Atomic Energy Authority by the fact that waste disposal has not had as high a
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priority as more exciting things. If I may borrow a leaf from the electronic industry, when you are making something very complicated you have to have an equally complicated piece of test apparatus. In practice it has been found that if you have the same contractor doing both jobs, the apparatus for testing (which ought to be engineered to a higher standard than the apparatus which is going to he tested) never gets engineered to so good a standard, because the best draughtsmen want to go on to the more exciting projects and you are left with a pedestrian piece of work. So the answer is for one contractor to make the main device and another to make the testing device. For that reason, we have to set up this independent authority and make it responsible for clearing up the rubbish as we go along.
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, as he expressed himself as much reassured by the information given by the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, might I ask whether he is in agreement that paragraph 302 of our report puts a somewhat different slant on the matter of the safety of the fast breeder reactors? Of course, what the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, had to say was absolutely correct, needless to say, but did not give perhaps the complete picture.
The Earl of HALSBURY: My Lords, that was broadly my understanding of the situation, before the reassurance of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton. I do not want to get into an argument with the noble Lord, because I know that I shall get the worst of it. But all I am saying is that this matter must be resolvable. There must be some authority to whom we can turn.
Lord HINTON of BANKSIDE: My Lords, perhaps I tried to be so brief that I was not completely clear. There are many modes of failure on all reactors. One of them—the one referred to in paragraph 302—is a loss of coolant failure. What I was talking about, and what I referred to in my speech, was the nuclear stability. In the fast reactor, with a mixed plutonium/uranium fuel you have nuclear stability, so that as the temperature rises you tend to slow down your reaction. This gives you a better opportunity of control. But still, with every type of reactor, there is a possibility

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of a loss of coolant failure. This generally can, and should, be dealt with by good engineering.
The Earl of HALSBURY: My Lords, I think I should leave the matter there and regard my speech as concluded.
4.36 p.m.
Lord HANKEY: My Lords, I am not in any way an atomic engineer, but I have been much concerned with this question since 1953 when I was Ambassador in Sweden, and we had a great deal of technical co-operation between Great Britain and Sweden. A number of brilliant and most illuminating scientists and engineers, like my noble friend Lord Hinton, visited that country on a number of occasions and everybody found them very instructive. I was also much concerned with nuclear questions through the Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, when I was at the OECD, and I have visited Dounreay three times and also Calder Hall in the early days.
Like others, I think that my noble friend Lord Sherfield started off this debate in a brilliant and most restrained and convincing way, and we are certainly very grateful to him. I wish that I could share the enthusiasm for the latter parts of the report which many Members of your Lordships' House have shown. I think that the explanatory parts are very valuable indeed; I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Halsbury. But I think it is quite wrong to beat about the bush to the extent that the Royal Commission do in all the latter parts. They put in everything that everybody said on both sides, and I think that a report of this kind is liable to raise the maximum fears among people who cannot understand atomic energy, and who do not follow the very balanced and sensible statements on the other side of the ledger; notably, those in which the Royal Commission, quite rightly in my view, underline the tremendous attention which our authorities and scientists and engineers pay to safety.
I should like to say that from my visits to nuclear establishments in the United Kingdom I have been very greatly struck by the same thing. They are extremely careful. They have very good fail-safe
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mechanisms, and I think that they take tremendous care both for the public and for the environment.
Here we have worked for 18 years on the fast breeder reactor. I believe that I first went to see it in 1959. There remain only a few engineering points to remedy, notably the design of the heat exchangers, which certainly present special problems at the high temperatures and radiation levels—problems which have never been met before, because nobody has used irradiated liquid sodium in that quantity or at that temperature. But I am convinced that these problems are not insoluble. The scientists and the engineers all say that they will find a solution; and I believe that the Department of Energy have recently given a large amount of money so that the necessary research should be carried forward.
Clearly, the problem of nuclear waste disposal ought also to be studied and solved soon. It is quite right that attention should be drawn to it. But it is not confined to the waste from fast breeder reactors. There is waste from the thermal reactors, from Windscale, and, for that matter, from the military installations. There is no reason why the fast breeder reactor programme should be held up for that disposal problem. Certainly it is not insoluble; the problem has to be solved and we shall certainly solve it.
I am not at all impressed by the talk about terrorists. Of course, there are some terrorists in a society or a set of nations in the Western World so freely, or should I say so laxly organised as ours. However, 32 countries all over the world already have nuclear power reactors. The list grows longer every year. Many other countries also have research reactors, and they all produce some plutonium. It is clear from the report that we are extremely careful with our own plutonium. If there is any real danger, it is that terrorists will get plutonium elsewhere. I do not believe that that danger is affected at all by our going ahead and using our own plutonium in our fast breeder reactor programme—and incidentally producing more for our own use. We must provide better safeguards against terrorists generally. I do not believe that providing plutonium for terrorists is the major danger. There are many other

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products, mostly chemical ones, which present much greater dangers, although I do not want to expand on this point for fear of giving the terrorists ideas.
There are other dangers, too. If we do not have the fast breeder reactor programme, then we have to use more of our oil—or else, like the Americans, we have to import more. The result is that we shall be more vulnerable. We have tankers travelling about the world in ever increasing numbers. Today we have seen what a disaster there has been on the East coast of America. We shall become more and more dependent on the North Sea installations which I believe are a major risk so far as terrorists are concerned. One has only to think of the Flixborough disaster and of what might happen at huge refineries like Fawley. In my opinion, the plutonium danger is a minor one by comparison with those.
The fact is that the plutonium economy is with us already. Several noble Lords have already made this point, and it sticks out a mile. All the argument in the report about the danger of the plutonium economy, as if it depended on our fast breeder reactor programme, is totally out of date. It shows that the Commission had not fully appreciated what is going on in the rest of the world, although they gave the necessary statistics. So the plutonium economy is with us now.
I am not at all impressed by the Royal Commission's alternative proposals, although I agree with them—and here they have rendered a valuable service—that we ought to try much harder than we do to use our existing energy resources more economically. As one drives up the motorways one sees enormous cooling towers wasting vast quantities of heat, and it is incredible that this should happen. If you travel up and down Germany, Sweden and France you see some cooling towers, of course, but you do not see a large quantity because the heat is piped into the towns. I do not know why Sheffield is not heated by those enormous cooling towers. Every time a building estate goes up I should have thought that provision ought to be made for a central heating plant. The report is very good on this subject. However, if we were to use coal and oil on an increased scale, as the report
1410
suggests, then we should be producing much more carbon dioxide and much more sulphur dioxide. For the conservationists to press us to go without nuclear power which does not give off these gases which are a potential danger to the environment, is something which I cannot quite understand. It seems to me that they have been guided by their emotions more than by a proper scientific approach in that connection. Thank God nuclear power avoids that danger to the environment!
I am in considerable doubt whether fusion can possibly come about at any early period to be an effective aid to the economy unless there is some very great breakthrough—perhaps with the enormous toroid at Culham. I personally find it difficult to understand how one can contain or make use of 50 million degrees Centigrade in a toroid without melting all the magnets necessary to concentrate the plasma. There is talk of a laser system but I believe that is miles away. I do not believe it will be with us this century and I shall certainly never see it in my lifetime, so I doubt if we should talk any more about that.
I cannot imagine that wind power would not arouse enormous objections from people when all our South Downs and North Downs and the hills round the country were covered with windmills. I should think there would be over-whelming objections—much more than to the power network necessary, about which so much is said in the report.
With regard to solar power I did not quite understand the point made by my noble friend Lord Tedder. There would certainly be a great many complications about removing algae from the sea in the quantity which he mentioned because a lot of living creatures feed on it and I think the fishing industry would have several things to say. Also I do not see how, if we had enormous power installations in the Sahara, we could get the power into this country. It would be a very expensive process.
The fact is that we must have more power. There is no possible doubt about that, even if one does not agree with the extrapolations in the report which, speaking as an economist, I did not personally find very convincing. Not only do we have

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to have more power but we have to use relatively more power in this country. If we take the OECD statistics issued in 1975 this country was ninth in the amount of per capita energy consumption and if we take the figures for 1976 (which were based on what happened in 1974) we are twelfth. So in this field, as in so many others, this country is sinking slowly. As soon as our economy recovers—and it will recover—we must get the better of this. It is a reflection of our very poor rate of investment and there has to be more power as the result.
I was very sorry to hear the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham suggest that advanced technology and technological industries are in some way damaging or even unchristian. The most damaging thing that could happen to this country would be to allow it to go on sinking into a state where it would be one big slum; and we are at present going that way. We have to look at the statistics, not just as they are today but over the years, and we have to look at them in a dynamic way. It is necessary to look forward and to see what is going to happen in 10 or 20 years' time. If we do not pull our socks up—and a lot of people are beginning to agree with this—that is where we and our children are going.
So here we have offered to us the fast breeding reactor which is a remarkable way of using up the uranium 238 which is the principal by-product from our first and second generations of reactors. That will increase the usefulness of our limited supplies of natural uranium sixty-fold. I do not see how else we can get the power. I agree with everything that noble Lords have said on this subject and as an economist I believe it is overwhelmingly important. I think that the fast breeder reactor programme—and I hope there will be more than two before this century is out—will alter the whole economic aspect of nuclear power production, and of the power available to our workers. At present they are under-paid because they are under-powered. It is interesting that America and Canada use two and a half times as much power per head as we do. For 20 years or more we have worked on this reactor. We still lead the world, and surely this is not the time to lose heart.
1412
What do the Royal Commission really want us to do? They specifically deny that they want us to scrap the fast breeder reactor programme. After all their pages and pages of beating round the bush, they want more talk, more public controversy and more reports. I really think it is quite ridiculous. In my opinion, the Government should go ahead as soon as possible to solve the outstanding difficulties. They should then order at once the first commercial fast breeder reactor to be built. The further reactor programme should be based on a standard design so far as possible, and not altered all the time, as happened with the Magnox and advanced gas-cooled reactors. It is essential that production engineers be included in the design teams to avoid our being landed with designs too costly or impractical to execute, and simultaneously —and I underline that word—we must settle the atomic waste problem, financing the necessary research as soon as possible. My Lords, this is a field where we now need firm leadership. I believe the Ministers for Energy and the Environment are eminently capable of giving this firm leadership. I hope the debate today will give them further support and encouragement.
4.53 p.m.
Lord HALE: My Lords, knowing nothing about the subject, I intervene simply to try to talk on something about which I know, and on which I have some experience. I spent 50 years of my life in the study of industrial diseases and accidents, sometimes participating in them. There are one or two things I want to say at once, even about the admirable report of the Royal Commission, where Sir Brian Flowers has given all the information that can be made available on the mathematics of the matter, although everyone knows that accidents are unpredictable, and there are no mathematics of the unpredictable. It is no doubt useful to say that this looks like one accident in 300 years, but it might be tomorrow.
My Lords, the causes of accidents are even less easy to evaluate or state. One of the real causes of accidents is the self-confident expert. The noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, was rather bemoaning the fate of the scientists of today, and saying,

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"We never get thanked for what we do. We take all the chances and nobody pats us on the back". I should have thought by now he was slightly wounded by pats on the back. The noble Lord is recognised as a man of outstanding genius; he is recognised for his services during the war; he is recognised as a perfectly de-lightful personality, and he is recognised as a very happy and able controversialist. But when one gets all the scientists al-together, it is an intellectual treat but often a moral dilemma. There are always the mathematics of the unpredictable.
The noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, spoke about prototype experience. Let us for a moment consider why in this area of advancing science, in this area of great expertise, in this world in which everyone knows more than the next man and a lot more, we are having more accidents than we have ever had. Graver accidents than we have ever before had are occurring; more serious accidents are occurring than when we chucked men down the pit with no rescue apparatus, no services, no way of getting them out, no way of sending anyone to see them if a flame broke out and there was a gas explosion. These are the sort of things we ought perhaps to have foreseen. Those were the days—and I assure your Lordships I have not even tried to make a list of them—when the biggest ever air disaster occurred. Certainly 300 people were killed because of the way the door was fastened. Is that unforeseeable? It cannot be unforeseeable because it happened before. The Douglas people had had a precisely similar type of accident in America. Have not Douglas got prototype experience, the thing to which Lord Zuckerman referred?
What about Aberfan. Was it really true that you could go on piling up muck near a housing estate until it was visibly shifting slightly and yet it did not occur to people that it might fall? What about the tube disaster? Have not the London Underground got prototype experience? Is there anyone who in his heart can say that this was not an outrage? Is there anyone who does not know that the question of whether the driver was ill or was drunk, or was not feeling very well, has nothing to do with it? The question is, where was the necessary secondary safety precaution that all experience
1414
requires in enterprises of that kind and that all of us thought existed?
The question of safety precautions is, of course, a matter of some importance in this matter. On the great journey across Canada there are long stretches of railway line where trains come up, interlock one with another, and pass. If a train stops, which it does not do very often, some signal has to be given to the train behind. There are not signals every hundred yards on lines which stretch over several thousand miles. So they have a rule—they explained it to me when I was there—that the man at the back of the train, an attendant who has a special name, but I forget what it is—
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: The brake-man.
Lord HALE: "Brakeman" will do; it is as good as the one I wanted. He gets out at the back the moment the train stops, and he walks 100 yards up the line and lights a fire. Once the fire is going the driver of the train coming behind can see it and he slows up. Trying not to sound patronising, I said: "It is a bit primitive, is it not?" They said, "Well, we have been working that system since the railway started, and we have never had a complaint. We have never had an accident, and our safety record is the best in the world". It was just my luck that next morning was not one of their best, and I was on the train. I woke up at half past eight on that next morning to see the engine poking straight up into the air, rather like a prancing horse, and (one of those sights you only go to see in the Royal Academy now) a wagonload of salmon lying spread about in the snow, and, unfortunately, the brakeman was no more. One or two other men went. But, fortunately, the restaurant car, which was smashed to smithereens, was completely empty although it had been full a few minutes before. This, of course, is experience. This of course is preparation and care.
The first accident I recall in my young life was the sinking of the "Titanic". There was an expert in England who happened to be on that ship. This was the unsinkable ship. The reason they did not have boat drill was because it was silly on a ship that could not sink. Why should you

1415
go through all the trouble of boat drill? Indeed, why should you carry too many boats, because no possible emergency could arise? It sailed from London with the blessing of all the shipwrights, the navigators and so on, and three days later it was sunk with about 1,500 passengers.
That was not the first disaster because 60 years before the outstanding ship in Her Majesty's Navy was the one that was built to go under sail or steam, HMS "Captain". It was on its first full exercises off Finisterre one day, and congratulatory messages were going out on its performance all over England. It got dark, and when the Admiral woke up next morning, he could not find it. Nobody ever did find it. It lasted one day. He had to wire to the Admiralty, "Regret to say HMS ' Captain' appears to have foundered with all its complement." In point of fact, one small boatload did arrive on the French coast in the end. They were all on deck at the time and they were chucked off by the boat capsizing. Of course, the court of inquiry said that no one was really to blame, just as they did about Albert and the lion. But everybody knew that they had got the centre of gravity wrong, and that is rather a serious mistake when you are under sail.
There is the third one, in which I was professionally engaged. I had the good fortune not only to have the services of my right honourable and learned friend the Member for Northampton in the conduct of the inquiry, but even the rarer fortune of seeing him here on the day before the Christmas holidays and persuaded him to stay for a moment. So far as anybody knew, there were no obvious faults with the submarine "Thetis". It left Liverpool under dual control, and was sailing somewhere off Llandudno. In an operation it tilted up so that half the submarine was out of the water—an over-loaded submarine at that; it had a complement of about 100—and half under water.
At this stage the Admiralty communication was by telegram. The news of the disaster was handed to a telegraph boy down on the South Coast, who stopped to have his tea before cycling uphill to deliver the message. It was that kind of thing. The deep-sea divers in Britain were at Scapa Flow. Immediately a
1416
message was sent to say that they were entirely at the disposal of the rescue team. They got a message back, "No need to come; nobody worry". When the inquiry came on, after 95 per cent. of the lives had been sacrificed and the sub-marine had gone, my right honourable friend asked one question of the diver who had been turned back—"What was the equipment you would have needed to save the lives of these men, " and his answer was, "One oxyacetylene blowpipe". Speaking from recollection, about 90 lives were lost.
It is, therefore, a question of looking very carefully at what action is required and, in these circumstances, recalling the accident at Windscale—I am anxious to be fair about this—I come down strongly to the view that we must provide fair working conditions and full insurance against every risk, having taken every precaution with every rescue facility. It must be open-ended insurance for anybody who can be damaged in this sort of operation. And I apply that very particularly to the increasing use of toxic poisons, of which we have been hearing, in industry.
There is a touch of cynicism in every politician, despite the admonition by the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. When I read of the comparatively minor but threatening disaster I refreshed my memory from the invaluable Keatings and I found the sequence of events something like this: 11 th October, rumour of a slight leak: 12th October, slight accident confirmed—no flames but glow; 12th October also, I think, milk found to be poisoned ail round and being poured down the drain as unfit for consumption; 13th October, special Cabinet meeting held. Perhaps I should withdraw the use of the word "special" because it may have been an ordinary Cabinet meeting. At any rate, the Cabinet considered the matter and almost immediately, certainly in the same week, there was an announcement that there would be a full inquiry but that it would never be published.
I can understand their desire to keep their secrets from the CIA; I would not trust the CIA with any secrets. However, that was rather unbelievably special treatment, and what I now read is that in fact what happened was that the wind changed and blew the poison over to

1417
Copenhagen, London and Cornwall—and blew it quite extensively—and fortunately diverted it from nearby Wind-scale, which might have suffered very greatly. That is the story. If one then has a secret inquiry, one must ask people to speculate and enquire.
I made reference in a Question the other day to the explosion at Seveso, but I will not go into that. In this charming place, eight days passed before an accident was announced or publicised at all. Seveso is in that lovely angle which Manjoni described so beautifully in I Promessi Sposi, but it is now very close to the large industrial city of Milan. It was a disaster pregnant with possibilities. We have not yet been told what they are, but there followed the programme on television in which we were told that this was the sixth country in which there had been this type of accident. Bolsina we knew of. The Bolsina accident was thought sufficiently serious to destroy the whole plant and say that they would never use it again. In another country, no news was given for 10 years. In another, they knew that every rescue worker was tainted with cancer. We are waiting now for information.
I shall conclude by telling as briefly as I can a story that I think particularly relevant to the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. I speak of what has been happening in Michigan. One factory there makes a product called Firemaster, which I think is polybrominated biphenyl. It is not made anywhere else in the world, so far as we know. PBB is really not known. PCB—polychlorinated byphenyl —is known and it is known to be a poison which lodges in the tissues, which is extremely dangerous and which does not respond to the ordinary bodily process of metabolism. It is one of the most dangerous of all poisons and is much stronger than thalidomide. The same firm also produces a product that it calls Neutromaster, which is a magnesium salt mixture which is used to strengthen animal feed. It is quite harmless and possibly helpful and it is supplied mainly to the Michigan Farm Bureau. They mix it with all the grain they are sending out as an additive for health.
This went very well. Nobody knew whether Firemaster stopped fire. Quite possibly it does not. I would not know, but a lot of people thought that it might
1418
and they bought it. The firm sold about 12 million lb. of Firemaster. Then the firm ran out of bags. This is what is called the unforeseeable and unpreventable accident. For the time being, therefore, instead of using different coloured bags, they used brown paper bags with the name stencilled on. Then they sent out a lorry driver with instructions to deliver a load of Neutromaster to the Farm Bureau. As the driver could not read or write, he delivered a load of Firemaster which was duly mixed up with the grain by the Farm Bureau and was sent to nearly every farm in Michigan. It killed animals to the tune of 30 million dollars-worth of compensation which has now been paid.
The hens ceased to lay, as they did when armour was refused to Joan of Arc, and then there was on the face of it a major disaster. It went on for months. Cattle had to be destroyed on the scale of a cattle disease. The slaughtered animals were chopped up and served as food to the other animals, so that all the healthy animals in Michigan had got it, and the hens were still not laying and men began to find themselves showing symptoms. Years have gone by; the matter has been investigated, postponed and thought over. But according to the figures we have seen 1,040 human beings, almost certain to be infected, have been examined. The report is in the hands of the medical officers who are looking at it. I do not quote this —it may be sensational—but I think it is the Observer which says that 9 million lives are in danger. This is a matter of wide concern. I am grateful to your Lordships for your indulgence. I am grateful to you for listening with such care, and I hope that you have a happy Christmas. I do not think that I ought in your interests to withhold the information that the diseased hens were disposed of by being sold to an international soup manufacturer, presumably for the best chicken soup.
5.16 p.m.
Lord KINGS NORTON: My Lords, to my very great regret I was prevented by circumstances beyond my control from attending the middle part of this debate, but I had the pleasure of listening to the opening speech by the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, which seemed to be a most admirable introduction to a report

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for which I had already developed considerable admiration. I thought that it was a splendid report and one which we can study in detail with profit for a long time to come. I was also delighted to hear many of the speeches just following that of the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, particularly the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, who I think was able to comfort us about the safety of ourselves but was doubtful about the safety of our barbarian posterity, and we should all be indebted to him for the splendid but somewhat claustrophobic vision of standstill pigs in a submarine pipeline.
One of the most interesting diagrams in the report of the Royal Commission is Figure 25, which helps to quantify the sources of our energy, and among other things it illustrates what qualitatively is indeed known to us, that we have large reserves of coal and oil and that we could, by exploiting these hydrocarbon fuels, continue for many years without the need of nuclear energy. If all the nations of the world were in the same fortunate position, it would perhaps be possible to postpone the development of nuclear energy for some years to come, or else to develop other sources of power so effectively as to make unnecessary recourse to nuclear energy, with what are still to me, despite the statistics of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, its terrifying safety problems. Unfortunately, this is not the situation, and while we could on our own pursue a purely coal-plus-oil policy for some years, we cannot afford to drop out of the highly competitive nuclear development field, and I certainly recommend that we should push ahead as determinedly as ever, not only looking for export opportunities, but applying to the waste problem the great skills which we undoubtedly have in the development of the highest safety standards. But, my Lords, it seems to me evident that nuclear energy policy cannot be allowed to continue ad lib, here or anywhere else, on the basis of unlimited and unrestricted proliferation. In other words, while for some time to come current developments, which are so much more important to the satisfying of the future middle-term needs of other countries than they are to the satisfying of our own, must be allowed to proceed, we must, if the world of our great-grandchildren is to be safe to live in, develop an alternative.
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My Lords, there is one inexhaustible source of energy which we must use—the sun. I fear that, having missed some of the earlier speeches in this debate, I may have been anticipated in what I have to say, and, indeed, from what the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, said, I rather think the noble Lord, Lord Tedder, must have been dealing with this theme; but if your Lordships will allow me, I should like to mention it again because I believe that we—and, here, I do not mean just the United Kingdom, but the leading nations of the world—have time to develop its use in such a way that nuclear power can, if we wish, be run down and, if we wish, abandoned. Some would say that that is a consummation devoutly to be desired. I am not sure; but, at least, it would be well if we were in a position to decide how much we wanted.
The energy of the sun is available to us in a number of ways. I think I can mention six. First, from the wind; second, from the waves—not the tide, my Lords; I do not suppose your Lordships thought it was, but that, indeed, is the moon—third, from direct absorption of the sun's heat by flat plate collectors; fourth, by photo-voltaic cells; fifth, by photo-biological means; and, sixth, by photo-chemical means. Forty years ago the nuclear power station was at the "gleam in the eye" stage. In 40 years, from a position of theory and laboratory experiment we have reached the highly sophisticated, immensely practical and economic nuclear power station of today —and, sadly, the horribly dangerous nuclear weapon. My Lords, can we not in the next 40 years develop the conversion of the sun's energy, bestowed so generously on this miserable world, to a similar or even greater stage of progress? This, in my view, should be the policy of all the nations of the world, and we should be prepared to show the way ourselves.
I do not think this is the time or the place to go into details. I do not think, any more than did the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, that the wind will ever be a great source of power. Too much wind-mill is needed for too little output. But it should be developed to the utmost, and could undoubtedly help less advanced countries than our own. The waves, while not much good to, say, Switzerland or Liechtenstein, could possibly make

1421
quite an appreciable contribution here. I am glad to know that work is proceeding on what I would believe to be a satisfactory scale. Optimists tell us that the whole current energy demand of this country could be met by about 300 miles of coast-located apparatus. Pessimists, and Dr. Musgrove in particular, tell us it would be 16 years before the energy output equalled the energy expended in making the apparatus. These are two different points of view; but, of course, by the time the apparatus had paid for itself it might well be worn out or covered in barnacles, and clearly the situation is one which must be investigated very carefully because it might have considerable possibilities.
But when we come to flat plate collectors we come to a different order of magnitude. For space heating and domestic purposes these have a tremendous future. Indeed, in some countries—and Israel is one of them—they are widely used already. I think that in Israel about one house in five depends for its domestic purposes on this kind of equipment. But the photo-voltaic cell, which we think of today as the silicone cell, is the most thrilling possibility with, I believe, a higher probability of success than nuclear fusion. It is at something about the stage at which nuclear energy was 40 years ago with the same sort of potential. Here is something to which I believe we should apply our maximum intellectual effort with all the necessary finance. The possibilities are tremendous.
In a speech that I made in November 1973, I told your Lordships that it had been estimated that the probable global energy demand in the year 2000 could be produced by taking up about 400 miles square of the earth's surface—0· 1 per cent. of the earth's surface, solid or liquid—by the appropriate installations. It is a gigantic concept but surely not daunting to a world which has brought nuclear energy so far and so fast.
Then, my Lords, there are the photo-biological routes—which I again gather from the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, were mentioned by Lord Tedder—such as growing plants and fermenting the crops to methane. Finally, and most remote of the possibilities that I have mentioned there are photochemical means in which the basis would be the CO2 of the atmosphere and water, both plentiful and
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recyclable, to get our hydrogen or methane or methanol by processes which have not yet been developed.
My Lords, none of the methods of producing energy that I have mentioned have dangerous side effects. Unfortunately, even if we pursued them successfully, we have still got the wretched nuclear weapons with us. I only hope that if nuclear power were restricted we should at the same time be hampering weapon development. I feel strongly that we should put a great effort into cultivation of the sun. I think that is the way of salvation and that we shall be wise to follow it.
5.27 p.m.
Lord TODD: My Lords, I must first crave the indulgence of the House for the fact that I was unable to be present at the opening of this debate. I should have been but, alas! I had to assist today at the funeral of a friend, Sir David Martin, Executive Secretary of the Royal Society, who has done almost more than anyone else I know to promote international scientific progress and to maintain the reputation of this country in that field. I am quite sure that in some of the earlier speeches, and certainly in some that I have heard this afternoon, many of the points that I might have made have been covered; so that I think that I shall confine myself to some general remarks in this field in order that, at any rate, my general views shall be known.
My Lords, I think that the report that we are discussing today is a very interesting one. It gives a very full review of the possible impact of nuclear power development on the environment. It also discusses the mechanism for control, construction, and setting of safety standards. For these reasons 1, like all other noble Lords, would certainly welcome the report. Unfortunately, I think the impression gained by general readers, although this is certainly not the intention of the Commission, is that it concentrates really on the fast breeder reactor and on whether or not we should carry on the pioneering work done at Dounreay on this type of reactor a stage further by setting up the design and construction of one commercial reactor, the so-called CFR 1.

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It is perhaps even more unfortunate that the report in that connection does not advise either to proceed or not to proceed. What it does is to postpone a decision, in my opinion unnecessarily. We have not much time to spare. There has been a lot of argument about likely demands for energy, and the ways in which we are going to meet them. Certainly from what I have read on the subject, it would appear that although there is some variation in the matter of dates, it would be not unreasonable to say on the basis of our present power sources, coal, oil, gas, water power and the current level of nuclear power supplies, that we are going to be hard put to it to meet our needs beyond about the year 2000. We simply cannot afford to neglect any new or improved sources.
There has been a lot of speculation about new or hitherto untapped sources of energy. Such speculation is, in the present context, very largely irrelevant. With great respect to my noble friend Lord Tedder, none of these speculative sources, including solar energy, has yet been taken to a stage which would justify any real reliance on them for closing an energy gap which will develop in the next 25 years or so. Remember, too, that we ought to be reserving our oil and coal resources for other purposes: for use as our main sources of carbon compounds on which depend most of our chemical industry and the satisfaction of almost the whole of our material needs. This is something that most people seem to forget. Oil and coal are not just fossil fuels; they are the only practical sources that we have of the hydrocarbons on which the organic chemical industry depends to produce the dyes, explosives, drugs, fibres, plastics, detergents, insulating materials, and so on, that are required. Without these, our daily lives would be very different and much less pleasant than they are today. More of these things are going to be needed in the future.
To me at least trying to close an energy gap by burning more and more of these fossil fuels is a kind of lunacy. We produce energy from these fuels by oxidising—that is burning—the hydro-carbons in them, producing at the same time masses of carbon dioxide which we usually liberate into the atmosphere. The
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long term effects of liberating more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could well be just as serious for the environment and for the human race as anything which could happen through the use of nuclear reactors, yet nobody seems to worry very much about this. Of course, we could argue that one does not need the hydrocarbons, that given unlimited energy, it would be possible to reduce carbon dioxide back to the hydrocarbon level and so make raw materials for industry in that way. This is true because it is what the vegetable kingdom is doing every day, using energy provided by the sun.
From our point of view the only conceivable source of energy on this kind of scale is nuclear fusion; that is to say, the controlled operation of the reaction used in the so-called hydrogen bomb and, if you like, the reaction by which the sun itself generates its heat and light. Research is going on in many places into the control of thermonuclear fusion. It should be pressed on with even more vigour than it is being pressed just now. Even an optimist like myself would consider that under the most favourable circumstances we are not likely to see a full-scale thermo-nuclear power station for 50 years or more—that is to say, until long after we are in trouble.
The need for us to conserve oil and coal to meet the needs of future generations for materials makes it all the more urgent that we consider every other potential energy source and, particularly from the standpoint of this country and Europe, nuclear energy is certainly one we ought to consider with a high priority. At present, as you know, our nuclear power stations depend on the fission of uranium 235. They depend therefore on the availability of uranium, of which rich and easily workable deposits are limited. If we stick to this kind of reactor, it seems to me that the fuel for such reactors must become more scarce and more expensive and, of course, it is here that the fast reactor comes in. Since it produces plutonium as well as burns it, the fast reactor offers us power which could without doubt be on a scale far in excess of that available from all the coal, oil and gas resources so far discovered.
Our own scientists and engineers are in the forefront of work in the fast reactor

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field. They have already demonstrated its potential in the prototype reactor which is now operating at Dounreay. The next logical step is to design and build one reactor on a commercial scale. Remember, my Lords, if we do that we are not committed to building more and more power plants on that principle, but if in fact the energy gap—which seems to be almost universally predicted—occurs before we can fill it with thermonuclear energy, we shall at least be ready to go ahead if we have done the pilot work on the fast reactor. What is more, our industry will be well placed to provide the power plants which will then be required in other countries. If we do not do it, we shall have to import the technology and equipment from overseas, with all that that would entail in cost and further industrial decline.
Of course, there are hazards about any new type of power plant, nuclear or otherwise. It seems to me that the report does not make it clear enough that the problems of radioactive waste and of plutonium getting into the wrong hands are not peculiar to the fast reactor. They are there now with present nuclear plants and with the very substantial stocks of plutonium already in military arsenals. But, as my noble friend Lord Zuckerman has already remarked, these dangers seem to have been contained pretty comfortably so far, and surely one prototype plant using a fast reactor is not going to make all that difference.
No advances are ever made in power generation or indeed in anything else, without some risk. What we have to decide is the degree of risk that is acceptable. In my view, the answer is simple: the risk in going ahead to build a CFRE reactor alone or preferably, as is suggested in the report, in concert with our EEC partners, is acceptable. I can see no reason at all for delay but I can see many reasons against it. It seems to me that in the days when Britain was in the van of industrial progress we did not worry or fuss too much about hypothetical dangers. We built very large gasometers in the middle of very densely populated areas, which one could argue was a very dangerous thing to do should there be an accident.
I am accustomed, as many of us must be, to hearing continual talk about
1426
Britain's ability and about new scientific discoveries and new discoveries in technology; but we are told that this is coupled with an apparent failure to exploit them on a commercial scale, so that our industry keeps on losing out to foreign competition. When I look at the recent agitation about the nuclear programme and the fumbling hesitation we have seen about the reprocessing plant at Windscale, I somehow begin to wonder: Is, perhaps, the so-called "British disease" some of us talk about not just indecision and timidity in the face of things that are new?
5.40 p.m.
Viscount THURSO: My Lords, although I am speaking from these Benches, I do not speak for these Benches. I have asked that I may come in in the gap, as it were, to speak in this debate in your Lordships' House, because I come from Thurso and therefore live in the home town of Dounreay. In fact, this debate this day has taken me back over 20 years to when Dounreay first came up into our midst in Caithness, when we had the same kind of apprehensions as have been voiced on various sides of your Lordships' House, and when we sought information on and clarification of the problems that we would face in having this highly advanced scientific, technological neighbour about whom so little was known.
I remember a talk that was given in the town hall in Thurso—I perhaps thought that I could get in quite easily, but, in fact, I had to listen from outside the main door, because the hall was packed—which was given by the then Sir Christopher, now Lord, Hinton to whom we have listened with such interest today. In that one talk—it was a slightly longer talk than his speech in your Lordships' House—he explained in clear terms to the people of Thurso what they would have to face, what the Atomic Energy Authority hoped to do in their midst and how it would affect them, and, I think, 21 years later I am able to say that he did not let us down. My experience is that we were told the truth about Dounreay, what it would be like and how it would affect our lives, and the progress of it has been more or less to schedule, affected only by the whims of government in giving more or less money and encouragement at different stages.

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I have, in fact, stood inside the core—before they were active, of course—of each of the three reactors on the site. I have watched them in construction, I have watched them running and I have a tremendous confidence built from knowing the people who work in the industry, from knowing their sense of responsibility to the human race as well as to their profession and their sciences. It is upon that that I found my confidence in atomic energy as something which we should hang on to in this country, something that is very precious to us, something that is very valuable to us and something which we can usefully and wisely use; and my confidence in our ability to use it wisely, also.
One of the main reasons why the critics of atomic energy criticise the so-called fast reactor programme is that they say they do not see the demand for larger quantities of power spelled out. But during this debate people have spelled out the reasons why we shall need a further supply of power, and the biggest reason, to my mind, is that even if we do not increase our demand man for man in the industrialised world, we shall need this power if we are to give to citizens of the Third World a standard of living equivalent to the one which we enjoy; and, indeed, to the third-rate citizens in our own country. I defy anybody to tell me that we do not need more power and cheaper power, when it is possible for people to die of hypothermia in our midst. Certainly we need supplies of power which are cheap enough and plentiful enough for all our citizens to enjoy. Also we need supplies of power which are cheap enough and plentiful enough for all the citizens of the world to enjoy.
Another point which is made, and which again has been dealt with in the debate in your Lordships' House, concerns terrorists getting hold of plutonium and the dangers of nuclear proliferation. I am not going to take up your Lordships' time, as I promised to be brief. However, on the evidence that is available to me I am satisfied that if countries wish to acquire atomic weapons they can do so without having a fast reactor. Furthermore, the progress of a fast reactor programme in this country would not increase the danger of proliferation but would decrease it
1428
because, apart from anything else, the type of plutonium within a fast breeder reactor is less readily fissile than the type within other reactors.
Finally, the third point that is made against the fast reactor programme is that it involves a massive increase in the invasion of civil liberties. However, may I assure noble Lords that nobody in Thurso feels that his civil liberties are being invaded by virtue of the fact that he works at Dounreay. People would be horrified if they thought themselves to be more spied on or less free than any other citizen in Britain. I assure noble Lords that that is not how people feel.
The Atomic Energy Authority is accused of being Micawberish in thinking about fast reactors as the only way out of the problems created by the energy gap. I would counter that accusation by saying that I think it is Micawberish to hope that something else will turn up to fill the gap which has been demonstrated by speakers on all sides of the House. In our fast breeder reactor programme already we have not only one of the leading reactors in the world but one of the best, one of the safest and one that has gone the whole hog in experiment and has tried things out at the right scale to prove whether or not they will work.
If we stop that programme and hope that in some way this will save us from some danger, we are deluding ourselves because we shall merely be opening up the field for other fast reactors in other countries. We shall be doing ourselves out of the fast reactor technology know-how. We shall be putting ourselves in a position where it will be extremely difficult to buy into somebody else's fast reactor if, in fact, we need to do so, because we shall probably have dispersed the brains and the trained technicians to other countries where fast reactor programmes are going on. Also we shall have nothing to sell in the way of knowledge about how fast reactor systems can be made to work and about how the technology of harnessing a fast reactor to electricity production can be made to work. Therefore, people will not be very interested in us joining in at a later stage if we have no programme of our own. Therefore I plead with the Government to take this decision as reasonably rapidly as it can be taken, principally so as not to jeopardise the fast reactor system

1429
which we already have and which we already could use. By all means do not let us rush it; by all means let us examine all the facets of it that need to be examined—the safety precautions, and so on. These are well set out in the report of the Royal Commission. But do not let us delay unnecessarily because delay will only lose us further valuable lead in know-how; it will only lose us further valuable people from the industry and it will only put us in a more difficult position if and when we need to use the system.
I should like to end by saying that it may be a bad thing to do wrong but it is equally a bad thing not to do right when one can. I think it is right that we should take our fast breeder reactor programme to the stage of CFR I. I am not suggesting that we necessarily want to go in for the whole programme of the Atomic Energy Authority, but I think we do want to go to CFR1, so that if the time comes that we need it, we can have it and use it.
5.51 p.m.
Viscount HANWORTH: My Lords, I removed my name from the list because what I wanted to say had been said previously and I thought that particularly on the last day noble Lords would be grateful if one speaker scratched. However, there is one point that I should like to make now and it can be made in about two minutes. The point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, but I should like to emphasise it. It is that we must look at this problem worldwide, because I believe that in the future the developing countries will demand a great deal more energy. As they are at the moment they are on the bottom of an exponential curve. One may reasonably suppose that in 20 years or so they will hit the steeper portion and the worldwide demands for energy at the time when we are hitting that gap will be far larger than we might suppose they would be, looking at our own situation. It may be possible here even to stabilise our demand; it will not be possible to do it for the developing countries.
The conclusion I arrive at is that it is even more important, therefore, and in fact essential, that we should have a nuclear programme to fill the gap. I am not in favour of nuclear fission as a means of providing energy but it is the
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only one which can fulfil the demands, so far as one can see, in the gap before something like the fusion process arrives.
5.52 p.m.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, for initiating this debate, and when I say "I", I am speaking not only on behalf of the Government but because I personally have found this a most fascinating intellectual exercise during this rather long debate today. I am also extremely grateful to Sir Brian Flowers and his colleagues on the Royal Commission for providing the occasion by producing a report that is not only interesting and mind stirring but rightly, as we have heard today, creates controversy and poses the uncomfortable questions with which the Government must grapple.
When my right honourable friend gave the Government's initial reaction to certain aspects of the report he emphasised then that far greater consideration was needed before a comprehensive answer could be given. Consideration still continues and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, felt that in tabling his Motion noble Lords would welcome the opportunity to express their views before the Government declare themselves. Certainly the Government will be grateful for this because as was said by the noble Lord opposite, seldom can there be any other place in which a debate of this sort, with the number of distinguished speakers who have taken part today, could take place. Also, the views are valuable not only as individual views but because they reveal a great diversity, and I think this was polarised by the views of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on the one hand and the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, on the other, and in between we have had points of information.
At this hour I do not intend to attempt to discuss the report in detail, nor to follow the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, into the financial and accounting arrangements on the details of supply and demand of energy. If I may, I will write to the noble Lord about that. Rather, I want to indicate the approach of the Government, and the considerations which have to be balanced. The noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, said that he hoped the Government would

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make a commitment which was unequivocally clear. This sounds all to the good, and probably is possible at some stage, but if I can sketch the problems en route, I think the noble Lord will appreciate why-and I am sure he knows already—it is impossible, beyond a certain point, to hurry this along without in fact going a long way.
My Lords, my starting point is the present standards of safety, on which many noble Lords have spoken. Briefly, the Royal Commission consider that the arrangements for the control of radio-active discharges have worked satisfactorily. They consider that the risk of serious accident in any single reactor is small; that existing or planned security measures render the risks from current nuclear development few, and that the disposal, at least of low-level solid waste, is satisfactory. Generally, the Royal Commission believe that at present the nuclear industry has a clean bill of health, with the important provisos contained in their recommendations on organisation and research. So even in this area any feeling of complacency would be misplaced, and quite rightly so.
The real burden of the argument of the Royal Commission is that future risks have to be guarded against by present planning. This was most cogently expressed by my noble friend Lady White who, as a member of the Royal Commission, had a particular contribution to make, because she was able to give voice to the printed word of this report, and to give also the whole flavour of the Commission. Personally, I found hers an invaluable contribution. This means we must find solutions to the problems arising from a vastly increased programme of nuclear power before we commit ourselves to extending the present programme. There have been differing views expressed on this from all sides of the House, and these I will note carefully when I read Hansard. From the differences one thing emerges, namely, that there is nothing easy about these crucial decisions, either for individuals to debate or for the Government to decide.
Listening to some of the distinguished contributions which have been made to this debate, I felt that we really had to learn from some of our history. We should remember that, even today, we
1432
are feeling the effects of the Industrial Revolution, which "just growed and growed" without any proper planning. Even today, we can see the effects of the unplanned industrial revolution in the country. It is this that any Government must try to avoid when trying to balance the various criteria on which to base their decisions.
My Lords, many people think that nuclear power should be abandoned altogether, since they consider that the risks it presents are quite unacceptable. There are people on that side of the spectrum. However, the Royal Commission did not take this view. The Royal Commission said it would be neither wise nor justified to abandon the option of nuclear fission power. Having taken this stand, their central theme is the extent to which we use nuclear power in the final years of this century and beyond.
This raises two major issues. The first major issue is whether we should adopt the fast reactor which makes full use of uranium reserves and, secondly, the extent to which we can commit ourselves to a major programme—given the awesome problem of disposing safely of high-activity, long-lived waste. This is the crunch. What must be the approach of the Government? The noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, put forward the economic and industrial factors em-phatically, succinctly, and with great conviction. The Government are aware that issues of national wealth creation have to he balanced with the social and environmental factors. This is imperative in our economy. My noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones reminded us that we are determining the standard of living of future generations, and the right reverend Prelate went rather further and said that what we are talking about is the kind of society we hope for in the future. So the problem does not contract but grows as one discusses it and looks at it.
The problems of nuclear energy have also extended the environmental horizons. The nuclear power business can no longer he judge and advocate in its own cause. I was interested, when the noble Lord, Lord McNair, was speaking, I thought in a very sympathetic and interesting way, about the human aspects of this problem, that he referred all the time to the Minister of Energy and the Department of Energy.

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There is no competition in what I have to say about this, because here we must work together, but I would think that today the relative hazards to the public at large, when we are discussing fossil fuel versus nuclear fuel, is as much a matter for the Department of the Environment and the Department of Health and Social Security as for the Department of Energy and the Department of Industry. It is essential that we should this as a trans-Governmental exercise.
In the absence of adequate safeguards nuclear power can present dangers to the generation using it. Discharges of radio-activity to the environment, unless they are controlled very strictly, can result in people most exposed receiving more than the maximum permissible dose of radiation, either as a result of direct contamination or through the food chain. An accidental release of radioactivity might spread the danger more widely. Noble Lords have referred to this, but I think it is important that I put it in the context of governmental thinking, because at the end of the day it is the Government which has to take the responsibility. It is, I think, this aspect which feeds many of our doubts about the use of nuclear power. There may be a risk of irreversible biological consequences for future generations.
I was very interested to listen to the noble Lord. Lord Aldington, who made an extremely vigorous and interesting speech on the need to go ahead with nuclear power; he also referred to our having to take care in this area. The noble Lord, Lord McNair, referred to us as being the guardians of posterity. The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, stressed the interesting point about leaving waste around that future generations may not know how to deal with, or they may not even know what they are, so to speak, stumbling on.
In a context of this magnitude international dialogue and co-operation are essential. I think the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, was absolutely correct when he spoke about the European view. Other noble Lords—I think the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman—spoke about the global view. If we do not get this sort of dialogue and co-operation going, the risks of dissemination of nuclear capacity leading to the proliferation of nuclear weapons can be highly dangerous. There is no guarantee,
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as we all know, even if we do get a maximum of co-operation, but without positive international effort the outlook could be grim.
There is also the danger of radioactive material getting into the hands of terrorists and being used to blackmail society. I am not going to linger on that question because a great deal has been said about it by other noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder felt very strongly that there was great danger here, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, and the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, were not impressed by this argument. The fact that there can be these very strongly differing views does again make it imperative that it is some-thing that Government have to look at and take into consideration in their future plans, as well as the implications of the safeguards themselves.
The Commission expressed fears about both the implications for our society, the security measures necessary, and also the efficacy of these measures in an era of nuclear expansion. I think the Commission got a certain amount of battering about this. Nevertheless, whether they are right or wrong—and indeed these things are not incompatible, since conventional security measures are not the only means of preventing illicit acquisition of plutonium, and I do not think I had better go into that any further because I feel that there have been enough seminars for would-be terrorists going on this afternoon—it is absolutely right that these things should be thrown into the debating arena in order that the Government can also take note of them and also see how they can put their own house in order, if necessary, in this field.
This picture cannot be completed without looking at the possibility of doing without a major nuclear programme. There are two options, both of which have been brought out fully this afternoon. Either we cut our demand for energy altogether, or rely on other energy resources. If the other resource is coal, then although automation improves mining conditions, mining will still continue to be more dangerous than many other occupations. Nor can we dismiss the potential effect on the countryside of the opening of new mines, or the possibility of air pollution through increased burning

1435
of coal. The hazards have to be compared whichever we do. So far there has been no serious study of this comparison. As the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, reminded us, we cannot forget the oil situation. Even with the arrival of North Sea oil the dependence of the West on oil is again something where a great many political judgments have to come in.
There were a number of interesting contributions on the renewable sources of energy such as wave and solar power. The noble Lord, Lord Tedder, came out wholly in favour of solar power, as did the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton. This was also discussed in the report, but at this stage it is neither certain whether we can rely on them—and this again was shown clearly by the differences of opinon expressed this afternoon—nor how far they would themselves carry social and environmental problems in their trail. The Royal Commission also suggested—and this was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona—that we should try to ease the problem by reducing our demand for energy. I am sure we are energy wasting in many areas in this country. But the Commission did not suggest, and I do not believe that the Government would either, that conservation could provide the solution. It might reduce some of our energy demands, but only minimally.
If we go too far along this road, then we have to be prepared for a lower standard of living. With the increased comfort and mobility which a high use of energy makes possible, it is not going to be easy to dismiss people's natural aspirations. When we look on the cosmic level, then we see that a low energy economy precludes a betterment of living standards in the Third and Fourth World. Though we are discussing this in somewhat national terms, we cannot ignore the international implications and must take the discussion into the realms of the underdeveloped countries of the world. The world population has a tremendous need for energy. In the really poor Fourth World, either we have to decide to go nuclear or restrict population.
The Government are in the unfortunate and difficult position of having to balance all these considerations. They have to
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balance them in a democratic society. This means that not only the views of the scientists and experts but the views of everyone else should be taken into account. The Government cannot and should not be wholly environmentalist or wholly materialist, with their eye just on the economy. They have to aim at the total national interest, but within the international context.
In this great debate—I say "great" advisedly in that I am referring not only to the debate of considerable calibre in your Lordships' House today but the debate which started some time ago, long before the report arrived, which is continuing and to which the Royal Commission has made such a substantial and lively contribution—it is difficult for the layman (perhaps I should now say, lay person) to cope with the complexities of scientific technicalities. The time scale within which it requires us to think is so colossal and the interactions we have to comprehend so complicated that it is hard for even the most fertile imagination to grasp. It is hard, as we have heard, to keep the arguments rational, and the emotional content is great. I think that in these areas—I say this speaking among scientists—a dash of emotion is not a bad thing, because we are talking not only about science but about humanity and human behaviour.
The time is, I think, more opportune now than previously in the last 20 years to attempt to strengthen safeguards by utilising international power; and, whether this is based on mutual fear or mutual good will, one hopes that the end result may turn out for the benefit of mankind. Some of the most fruitful suggestions that have come out of this debate have been on the issue of the debate being based on adequate information, as was recommended by the Royal Commission, and that the debate should be widespread, and a number of very helpful and useful suggestions have been made. The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, explained, I thought with great clarity, the reaction of the people of Thurso, and the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, explained exactly what the situation was and what the dangers and advantages were.
My noble friend Lady White rightly said that people had the right to have the

1437
risks explained to them; the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, rightly said that the myths should he exploded and the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, said it was far easier to generate fear than confidence. Is that not another way of saying that ignorance is a very good breeding ground for fear? It is really sheer ignorance of something which to many of the speakers this after-noon is child's play—at any rate to discuss, because they understand the subject so completely—and this is the problem with which the Government are faced and with which I am sure we shall find a way of coping. It is a question of getting the debate properly off the ground so that it can be discussed in terms which are understandable to the lay person who does not have a specialised scientific basis.
The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, said the Government should commission a work which, as I understood his suggestion, would be a compilation of scientific material which would be intelligible to the layman—a good idea which I will certainly put forward. I think that that is a very good idea and I shall certainly put it forward, as I will the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, for a bureau of scientific information attached to Government Departments.
My noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder thought that Government Departments should do more to equip themselves to give a scientific background to their thinking and policies. That, again, is worth very careful consideration. The Government are well aware of the extent of the problems but they are also very well aware that they are not easy to solve. Indeed, although I share in general terms the strictures of the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, against encouragement of "delay, linger and wait"—I have been writing "urgent" on all the papers that I have sent out, but I found that it debased the currency so I had to stop—the Royal Commission has set out the issues and its report forms a very good starting point, and I really believe that this debate has taken the matter a good deal further. I believe that we shall all find when we come to read Hansard that there has been a great deal of hard comment and information on the report. I do not mean "hard" in the sense of "critical", though naturally some contributions have been critical: the Commission would
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hardly have done a job worth doing if everybody had agreed with it.
Luckily, for once, time is on our side, not, I know, in the long-term cycles in which it has been discussed by some noble Lords but in the sense that we have time to think about it and to try to get a reaction from people and to get their views. Also, it is essential in a democracy for the Government to carry the people with them. This, again, means information, education and complete understanding of what is involved. A totalitarian State does not have this problem, but this is part of our democratic society and it is something for which we are very grateful but which we have to harness in order to get the under-standing and lessen the very real fears of a great many people. Although. as I said, time is on our side, I also agree that we must not let it slip away before taking what may be one of the most profound and important decisions of our generation.
6.18 p.m.
Lord SHERFIELD: My Lords, I should like to express my thanks to noble Lords for their contributions to this debate, and perhaps especially to the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, for curing himself of laryngitis just in time to make a powerful speech; to the noble Lord, Lord Aldington, who overcame jet lag to come here today, and to other noble Lords who have no doubt conquered similar inconveniences. I should like particularly to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, for her Statement earlier and her very full and interesting reply to this debate. I am sorry to have been the unwitting cause of putting a heavy burden on her in mid-December—a time which, if I remember correctly, is one of heavy pressure on Ministers. I was glad to hear that the noble Baroness had not found the after-noon a waste of time.
It is no surprise to me that a very wide spectrum of opinions has been expressed in this debate. I shall take up only one or two points. In introducing the debate, tried in the interests of brevity to compress my remarks and that may have led to some misunderstanding. I did not say, as the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, suggested, that the Royal Commission was wrong in involving itself in nuclear sabotage and terrorism. I did not question its decision to do so. Nor did I, as

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the noble Lord, Lord Avehury, suggested, dismiss the subject. I merely voiced a little scepticism which has been echoed by a number of subsequent speakers. I was challenged by the noble Lord, Lord McNair, about the use of the word "robust" in relation to the result of the polls in California and six other American States. I used the word because the population had been exposed to heavy propaganda by the anti-nuclear lobby and yet it voted—13½ million people—two to one to brave the dangers with which it was confronted. I would also apply the same adjective to the noble Baroness, Lady White, who shows the same quality under equal, if opposite, pressures.
As regards the great debate, I did not say that it should be brought to an end. As the noble Lord, Lord Aldington, observed, it has a long way to run yet, and of course I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, said at the end of her remarks. But there are problems about this debate in relation to the requirements of the time scale, because the need for discussion can be used almost ad infinitum to delay decisions, although I am sure that that is not the intention of the Government.
Furthermore. such a debate thrives on sensation and tends to create sensation-alism and embattled lobbies, and Sir Brian Flowers himself has referred to the low level at which some of it has been conducted. On the sensational side, the recent small leak at Windscale has been blown up out of all proportion, and it shows how completely different criteria are applied to nuclear operations as opposed to other operations. In a large industrial organisation the managing director does not expect to be informed of every fire in a paint shop, which is a comparable incident.
I rather regret the decision to call in the planning approval of the oxide plant at Windscale. It seems to me rather like putting up a lot of new hoops in a game of croquet when you are approaching the stick. But now that the decision has been taken I hope that the inquiry will be expedited. Contracts worth half a billion pounds and a number of jobs hang on the decision. I should just like to repeat what I said earlier, that in my view reprocessing at home under adequate safeguards can and should be separated
1440
from the wider problems of international proliferation.
In asking the Government to make a general commitment to nuclear power I was thinking of all those engaged in the nuclear business at home and overseas. But of course such a commitment has to be implemented by a succession of decisions taken, as I said earlier, after what-ever public discussion and debate the Governmeut consider to be necessary. I will not prolong the debate further, and with renewed expression of thanks to all who have taken part in it and to Sir Brian Flowers and his colleagues for producing such a profoundly interesting report, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

CONSOLIDATED FUND BILL
Brought. from the Commons endorsed with the Certificate from the Speaker that the Bill is a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act 1911; read 1a. Then, Standing Order No.43 having been suspended (pursuant to Resolution), Bill read 2a; Committee negatived; Bill read 3a and passed.

FISHERY LIMITS BILL
Returned from the Commons with the Amendment agreed to.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, before moving the adjournment may I, with the leave of the House, on behalf of my noble friends wish noble Lords in all parts of the House a pleasant Christmas and a happy New Year.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, at this seasonal time, when all the usual channels are flowing with milk and honey suitably laced", I should like to reciprocate, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, the good wishes and Christmas greetings, not only to all Members of the House but to all the staff as well.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do adjourn during pleasure until 6.35.
Moved accordingly and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

ROYAL ASSENT
6.35 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones): My Lords, I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

Consolidated Fund (No.2) Act 1976,

National Insurance Surcharge Act 1976,

Fishery Limits Act 1976,

Scottish Transport Group (Castle Bay Pier) Order Confirmation Act 1976.

  EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT FUND GRANTS
  EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT FUND GRANTS
  UNEMPLOYMENT AND "WAGE STOP"
  UNEMPLOYMENT AND "WAGE STOP"
  EARNINGS-RELATED SUPPLEMENT AND THE UNEMPLOYED
  EARNINGS-RELATED SUPPLEMENT AND THE UNEMPLOYED
  ROMANIAN SUIT IMPORTS
  ROMANIAN SUIT IMPORTS
  GOSFORTH (TYNE AND WEAR) BY-PASS
  GOSFORTH (TYNE AND WEAR) BY-PASS
  CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS: CONTESTED CASES
  CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS: CONTESTED CASES
  LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND DIRECT LABOUR ORGANISATIONS
  LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND DIRECT LABOUR ORGANISATIONS
  COBHAM-ESHER BY-PASS
  COBHAM-ESHER BY-PASS