Sitting of 14 November 1979

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

ROYAL ASSENT
Mr. Speaker: 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. Southern Rhodesia Act 1979

2. Van Diemen's Land Company Act 1979

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  ENVIRONMENT

    Council Houses (Sale)
    Mr. Douglas-Mannasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what percentage of local authority tenants he estimates will have incomes adequate to enable them to exercise the proposed rights to purchase local authority housing, without imposing financial liabilities on members of the tenant's household, other than the tenant's wife or husband.
    The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. John Stanley): It is not possible to give a reliable estimate on the information available.
    Mr. Douglas-Mann: I refer the Minister to the series of written questions which he and his hon. Friends answered on Friday, which showed that the average income of two-thirds of local authority tenants was below £4,000 a year. The average price of local authority houses and flats is more than £10,500. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, at best, only one-third of local authority tenants could conceivably benefit from the proposal to sell council houses, whatever the discount?
    Mr. Stanley: The hon. Gentleman should be aware that about 250,000 council tenants have already been able to buy their homes and flats. We are not in the business of chasing numbers, but we wish to give tenants the opportunity to buy their homes. That was our commitment at the election, and that is what we shall do.
    Mr. Durant: Does the Minister agree that the shared purchase scheme proposals will help to overcome the problems referred to by Opposition Members?
    Mr. Stanley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The scheme will help low-income buyers to gain access to home ownership, which otherwise they would not have.
    Mr. Kaufman: Has the Minister sent a reply to the letter that he received from the National Council of Building Material Producers? It wrote to him warning that the diversion of scarce building society funds for council house sales could significantly affect the level of private house building by raising mortgage rates to sky-high levels and creating a famine. Why are the Government clobbering the private home owner?
    Mr. Stanley: The right hon. Gentleman should be aware from the consultation paper that we see no reason why council tenants should not have the same right of access to building society mortgages as everyone else. It is for the building societies to decide whether they will give an applicant a mortgage in the normal way.
    Mr. Heddle: Does my hon. Friend agree that where an elderly widow living in a local authority property is unable, because of certain circumstances, to buy that property the right should be given to her next of kin?
    Mr. Stanley: We are making provision in proposed legislation whereby a sitting tenant who has other members of the household living with him may undertake a joint purchase. That will be valuable in the circumstances to which my hon. Friend refers.
    Mr. Anderson: Does the Minister accept that by that policy low-income families currently in council accommodation will face the prospect of decent

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    accommodation receding ever-further from them?
    Mr. Stanley: It is evident that those who wish to buy are doing so with a view to staying.

    Rating System
    Mr. Stephen Rossasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether his review of the present rating system will take into account the problems of commercial and industrial ratepayers, particularly those of small shopkeepers.
    The Minister for Local Government and Environmental Services (Mr. Tom King): Yes, Sir, and in addition we hope to bring forward legislation in this Session to extend domestic rate relief to a wider range of mixed business and domestic properties, and to extend the right to pay rates by instalments to non-domestic ratepayers.
    Mr. Ross: I thank the Minister for that assurance. As the Government have done away with the revaluation ordered by the previous Labour Government, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether, in the review, he will replace the rating system for not only the domestic ratepayer but ratepayers of industrial and commercial premises? Some small shopkeepers are facing problems, and there will be anomalies that will become greater if the revaluation is not to take place.
    Mr. King: I understand the concern felt by commercial ratepayers, especially the small shopkeeper, over the substantial increases in rates in recent years. We have made clear our intention to seek the abolition of the domestic rate. I have no further comment at this stage on the wider matters which the hon. Member has raised.
    Mr. Hal Miller: Does my right hon. Friend understand that the cancellation of the revaluation of rating for non-domestic premises—such as commercial and industrial premises—has not only attacked the rating base for the income of local authorities but has created a good deal of uncertainty about local authority policies towards those premises?
    Mr. King: My hon. Friend will be aware that even if the revaluation had gone ahead it would not have been implemented before 1982. There will be no
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    immediate change. I understand the concern that is being expressed. We are considering introducing, in legislation shortly to be brought before the House, a partial revaluation power to deal with the uncertainty to which my hon. Friend has referred.
    Mr. Wigley: Will the Minister give an assurance that his consideration of domestic and commercial rating will encompass the need to use some basis other than rateable value for the charging of water rates? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the present system is totally inequitable in both the domestic and commercial sectors?
    Mr. King: If the rating system is abolished, that will have consequences for the present method of charging for water. That is one of the factors that we shall take into account in our review.

    Council Houses (Condensation)
    Mr. Roy Hughesasked the Secretary of State for the Environment, if he is considering any fresh initiatives to combat condensation in new council house dwellings.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg): We will consider the need to take further action, in the light of advice from the joint working party on heating and energy conservation in public sector housing, as soon as we have the results of the current Building Research Establishment survey of complaints about condensation.
    Mr. Hughes: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that far more research is needed at national level into this serious problem, and that more money should be made available to individual local authorities to deal with this difficulty? Will he bear in mind, too, that this is a serious problem in Newport and is causing great distress to tenants, especially those in new properties?
    Mr. Finsberg: I appreciate that it is a real problem. If the hon. Gentleman will send me specific details concerning Newport, I shall have them examined. I am due to receive a report on the new survey towards the end of the year. In the light of the information that came from the six local authorities involved in the survey, I hope that we can gain a

    1305
    wider appreciation of the many real problems that are emerging.
    Mr. Greville Janner: Is Leicester one of the six local authorities to which the hon. Gentleman has referred? Is he aware of the valiant efforts that the city's housing department is making to combat the blight of condensation? Will he do what he can to assist?
    Mr. Finsberg: The answer to the first part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's question is "No". Leicester is not one of the six local authorities involved. As I said to the hon. and learned Gentleman on an earlier occasion when environment questions were being dealt with at Question Time, my officials will be pleased to examine the problems to which he referred on the Braunstone estate. We feel that it is wiser to wait until the city council tell us that its remedial works are sufficiently far advanced.

    Beckton District Plan
    Mr. Spearingasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make an official visit to Beckton in order to view progress made in implementing the Beckton district plan.
    The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Heseltine): The Beckton district plan has not yet been formally adopted, and I would not therefore wish to comment on its merits at this stage. I have no plans at the moment to visit Beckton.
    Mr. Spearing: Will the Secretary of State give serious reconsideration to his refusal to visit part of the Docklands area in my constituency? Is he aware that the fact that he has viewed the area from a helicopter before announcing his plans for an urban development corporation has received bad publicity in the area? Before he makes further pronouncements on the plans, will he visit the area personally in the status of one of Her Majesty's Ministers?
    Mr. Heseltine: I believe it right to allow the Beckton plan to be considered and finalised, if that is the wish of the local authority. The hon. Gentleman will know that the urban development corporation has been called for as loudly by his right hon. and hon. Friends as it has by my right hon. and hon. Friends.
    Mr. Spearing: No.
    Mr. Heseltine: The corporation will shortly be discussed by the House.
    Mr. Arthur Lewis: Will the right hon. Gentleman give us a good reason why he should not visit the area? It is not far from this place. It would not take him long to make a visit. It would do him some good, and it might help to regain some of the good faith which, unfortunately, the electorate had in the Tory Party at the time of the general election.
    Mr. Heseltine: I think that the hon. Gentleman is aware that the question is about the Beckton district plan. It would be inappropriate for the Secretary of State, in his quasi-judicial position, to visit local authorities while they are in the process of considering their local plans.
    Mr. Hattersley: Is the Secretary of State aware that throughout Docklands a great deal of proposed industrial development is being held up because of the uncertainty that is being created by his announcement.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The question is directed to Beckton and not to the whole of Docklands.
    Mr. Spearing: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker. May I inform you, Mr. Speaker, that the Beckton district plan is wholly within the London Docklands area?
    Mr. Speaker: I am obliged to the hon. Member, because I did not know.
    Mr. Hattersley: Is the Secretary of State aware that within Beckton and other areas in the London Docklands area a great deal of uncertainty is being caused and much development held up because of the fear that when his proposals are put into operation the new corporation will want to start from scratch and draw up a new plan? Will he make it clear that work should go ahead and that there is no reason to assume that the corporation will want to start from the beginning again?
    Mr. Heseltine: Will the right hon. Gentleman give me an example of one project that is being held up?
    Mr. Hattersley: I shall be delighted to send the right hon. Gentleman all the examples given to me by the councils

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    when I, unlike him, visited the area to see for myself.
    Mr. Heseltine: If the councils will give me such examples, we shall be able to have a real debate.

    Council House Building
    Mr. Norman Atkinsonasked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many units of council housing he expects will be started in 1980; how this compares with the average number of starts over the last five years; and if he is satisfied with the progress made.
    Mr. Stanley: The average of new house building starts by local authorities in England over the five years 1974 to 1978 was 92,000. The level of house building in 1980, and the progress made, will depend upon the decisions made by each local authority.
    Mr. Atkinson: Does the Minister accept that that answer is totally evasive? Does he agree that when the figures are revealed they will represent an absolute disgrace? Is he aware that many thou-stands of families have no bath and no hot water and have to go through somebody else's living room to get to the lavatory? Is he also aware that thousands of families do not enjoy normal marital relations because they have no privacy? Families are living in the most dreadful conditions, yet the Minister will announce a deplorable lack of starts next year. He is willing to be complacent and do nothing about that.
    Mr. Stanley: The lack of starts is a reflection of the fact that we inherited the lowest house building programme for 30 years when we took office. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make such criticisms, he should address himself to the performance of the local authority in his constituency. In the last two years of the previous Labour Government Haringey underspent by £4·4 million.
    Mr. Michael Morris: Instead of worrying too much about the absolute level of council housing, will my hon. Friend address himself to the problems of London boroughs such as Islington, Haringey, Lambeth and Camden, with their thousands of council properties that remain empty? It seems that no pro
    1308
    gress is being made to deal with that situation.
    Mr. Stanley: I agree with my hon. Friend that it is imperative that local authorities make the best use that they can of their existing housing stocks. I deplore the fact that there are some high levels of vacancies in certain London authorities.
    Mr. Dubs: When considering next year's starts, will the Minister distinguish between Conservative and Labour—controlled local authorities? If he does that he will note that the tardiness in new housing starts comes mainly from Conservative-controlled local authorities, such as Wandsworth in my constituency.
    Mr. Stanley: The underspend is similar between authorities of different political complexions.
    Mr. Major: Would it not be more cost-effective to divert scarce resources into improvement and renovation rather than apply them to the building of council houses?
    Mr. Stanley: As my hon. Friend will know, one of the most unfortunate developments during the past five years has been the serious decline in the improvement programme. As a result of the new provisions that we look forward to bringing to the House on improvement and repairs, we hope to be able to reverse that trend.
    Mr. Freeson: I revert to the original question. Is it not correct that the figures published in the recent public expenditure White Paper are based on an assumption that there will be about 45,000 to 50,000 housing starts by local authorities? If that is correct, does not the hon. Gentleman consider that disgraceful as an intended policy?
    Mr. Stanley: One of the important changes that we shall be making, which will, I hope, help to reduce the appalling levels of underspend that took place when the right hon. Gentleman was a member of the previous Labour Government, will be to alter the present system of housing investment programme allocations so that local authorities have a single block, which will enable them, I hope, to make the best use of the allocations.

    Urban Areas (Private Assistance)
    Mr. Steenasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will take steps to relax planning, fire and building regulations so as to help bring more private investment into redeveloping rundown urban areas.
    Mr. Neubertasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will take steps to relax planning, fire and building regulations so as to encourage more investment to private enterprise in ailing urban areas.
    Mr. Wheelerasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will take steps to relax planning, fire and building regulations so as to encourage private investment in city redevelopment.
    Mr. Heseltine: As I said in the reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Thornton) on Monday 12 November 1979, I am hoping to publish proposals to reduce the scope of planning controls shortly. We are also taking a fundamental look at our system of building control, though we intend to maintain standards of health and safety. Fire regulations are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
    Mr. Steen: Is the Minister aware that the Liverpool city planning department has served compulsory purchase orders on two flourishing firms in the inner city? The premises are soon to be demolished and replaced by public housing at a time when 1,500 acres of public land are vacant within the inner city boundaries. Will the Minister curb the powers of local authorities to serve compulsory purchase orders? Will he tell them that their job is to help small businesses and not to destroy them?
    Mr. Heseltine: I have constantly drawn to the attention of local authorities my suggestions that they should help to encourage small businesses. I am pleased to inform the House that the authorities in Liverpool are co-operating with me in examining, on a site by site basis, the 1,000 acres of substantial sites of derelict land within the area of the city.
    Mr. Neubert: Does my right hon. Friend agree that rigid zoning policies have often been the enemy of small inno
    1310
    vative private enterprises in inner city areas? Does he foresee the removal of some of those obstacles under his new proposal?
    Mr. Heseltine: This matter requires looking at. We need policies of greater flexibility.
    Mr. Wheeler: I thank my right hon. Friend for his encouraging answer, but may I emphasise that in my constituency one small business is prevented from starting up because of the rigidity of the planning norms?
    Mr. Heseltine: I do not have details of the small business to which my hon. Friend refers, but he will be aware that it has a right of appeal to the Secretary of State.
    Mr. Allan Roberts: Is the Secretary of State willing to accept that areas such as Merseyside and Liverpool will get investment only through public investment? Does he accept that the urban development corporation that he has announced for Merseyside is seen as a ray of hope if it means that resources will be put through that corporation and that it is not simply window-dressing?
    Mr. Heseltine: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's support for the urban development corporation. It supports the view I put forward that my proposals have been called for as loudly from the Opposition Benches as from my own. I assure the hon. Gentleman that this is an indication of the Government's commitment to the reclamation of two conspicuously derelict areas.
    Mr. Moate: In view of the continuing high level of loss of life through fire, will my right hon. Friend persuade his colleagues to resist any suggestions made by my hon. Friends to relax fire precautions?
    Mr. Heseltine: I very much hope that I made it clear in my original answer that we have no intention to prejudice safety.
    Mr. Stallard: Does the Secretary of State accept that his last remark will be welcomed by many hon. Members who consider that fire regulations are of the utmost importance? Is he aware of the serious fire risk that exists, particularly in houses of multi-occupation and houses for single people, and in hostels? Will he not

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    reconsider the Government's attitude to the Private Member's Bill, to be introduced on Friday, of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Dean), which would help to correct matters?
    Mr. Heseltine: I have made clear that this is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I must say at once that the general question of fire regulations is not a matter of current debate.
    Mr. Heddle: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some of the fire regulations in county Bills, having gone through the House and, therefore, being in draft stage in other respects, are of a higher standard than those incorporated in the national building regulations? Has he any intention to harmonise the two?
    Mr. Heseltine: Fire regulations must be a matter for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
    Mr. Oakes: Will the Secretary of State heed the wise words of his hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) and resist the siren calls from some of his less responsible hon. Friends who are trying to create administrative no-go areas in English cities? Will he discuss with his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary the inner city area fire at Woolworth's in Manchester which was a holocaust. Is there any credence in the rumours that the Secretary of State intends to transfer responsibility for the administration of building regulations to private insurance companies?
    Mr. Heseltine: I know of no one in the House who needs less prompting from me than my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on such issues of pulic interest as safety matters. I have made this clear. I am engaged in wide-ranging consideration of building regulations. The regulations cover a whole range of subjects. We do not intend to make changes that will prejudice public safety.
    On the generality of building regulations, I have made clear, and I have publicly announced, that I am looking at the way in which they are administered to see whether we can find a better and more effective method of dealing with them. If I had to give an indication to the House that might support the arguments put forward from the Opposition
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    Benches, I would acknowledge that there can be varying practices in the administration of building regulations at the discretion of about 400 authorities. This may not be considered to be in the best interests of the standards themselves.

    London Dockland
    Mr. Moateasked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to announce his detailed proposals for the establishment of an urban development corporation for London dockland.
    Mr. Heseltine: The Local Government, Planning and Land Bill which will be introduced shortly will contain enabling proposals. Thereafter, I hope to make the necessary order to set up the development corporation as soon as possible.
    Mr. Moate: My right hon. Friend's initiative will be widely welcomed as probably the only way to restore life to the urban and political wastelands close to the heart of our great city? Will his strategy be to ensure that the urban development corporation should be not, a drain on public resources, but a magnet for private enterprise and private capital?
    Mr. Heseltine: I thank my hon. Friend for drawing the attention of the House to the welcome that my proposals have received on a broad basis. On the second part of his question, these urban development corporations will have to recognise the partnership that is necessary between public and private resources in coping with dramatic opportunities. The prime objective must be to create a climate in which the maximum private commitment can follow public commitment initially.
    Mr. Guy Barnett: Is it correct to draw the conclusion from the consultative document that the right hon. Gentleman issued that he proposes to set up urban development corporations without the public inquiry required for new town development corporations? If that is his purpose, it will deprive many individuals of their proper rights.
    Mr. Heseltine: The lion. Gentleman will be aware that there is to be a parliamentary process and therefore a wide opportunity for consultation on the procedures that I have in mind.
    Mr. Chapman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the thousands of acres

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    that have remained derelict in the Dock-lands area for many years are testimony of the inability of any London borough or of the Greater London Council to deal with the massive re-development that is necessary?
    Mr. Heseltine: That is why the demand for the changes that I have announced has come from both sides of the House.
    Mr. Leighton: Is the Secretary of State aware of the bad impression that he caused when he met a deputation of Newham councillors recently? I am told that he started by saying that nothing they said would change his mind and his decision. Instead of flying over the area in a helicopter, will he reconsider his view, go down to Newham with the elected representatives, and actually see what they have done?
    Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman criticises me for what I am supposed to have said to the Newham councillors, which I would contest. I should have thought that the whole basis on which the Labour Party operates is that it never opens its mind to anything that it ever hears on any subject.

    Council Houses (Stockport)
    Mr. McNallyasked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many council houses have been built in the metropolitan borough of Stockport in each of the last five years; and what is the present waiting list.
    Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: The number of council houses completed in the metropolitan borough of Stockport in each of the last five years was:

    1974

    76

    1975

    143

    1976

    243

    1977

    658

    1978

    146

    There are currently reported to be 4,534 people on the council's waiting list.
    Mr. McNally: Is not the Minister aware that those statistics are a disgrace? The Government's housing strategy means that poorer working-class couples in Stockport face the prospect of the best housing stock being sold off, the worst being left in disrepair, and the Government's policy on interest rates putting
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    private housing beyond their reach? The whole Government housing strategy, as those statistics show, is a cruel fraud on working class couples.
    Mr. Finsberg: If the hon. Gentleman bothered to study the facts, he would realise that waiting lists are a most unreliable measure of housing need. He also ought to realise that, according to the information reaching my Department, the reductions in this year's programme caused no problems at all. I believe that Stockport is well capable of looking after its own affairs.
    Mr. Heddle: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is precisely that political Dutch auction attitude that lies behind the question of the hon. Member for Stockport, South (Mr. McNally) that has condemned a number of people to the council house waiting list for an interminable length of time? Surely the Government should be concentrating on need rather than on numbers.
    Mr. Finsberg: I could not be in greater agreement with everything that my hon. Friend has said.

    Peak District National Park
    Mr. Knoxasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will introduce legislation to enable the board of the Peak District national park to be democratically elected.
    Mr. King: We have no plans for legislation on this matter. Two-thirds of the members are appointed by the democratically elected county councils concerned.
    Mr. Knox: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many of my constituents who live in the Peak District national park think that the board is insensitive to their interests and tends to put the interests of visitors above theirs? Does he agree that there is a great deal of merit in allowing the people who live in the park directly to elect the board which would then be responsible to them?
    Mr. King: We have no proposals to change the position. There is a particular difficulty with regard to the Peak park, in that six county and nine district councils are involved. However, I take very much to heart my hon. Friend's comment about the need to ensure that the interests of the people who live in the park are properly

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    considered. We shall reinforce that point in representations to the planning board.
    Mr. Parris: I accept what my right hon. Friend said about the difficulty of direct elections. Does he accept that there is a problem between the Peak park planning board and those who live and work in the park over the planning control authority? The board does a great deal of valuable work, but there is a problem in this respect. Will my right hon. Friend consider three measures that might help? First—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The House must be fair to the hon. Gentleman, and he must be fair to the House. I hope that he will not make his three points now. Perhaps he will contact his right hon. Friend later.
    Mr. Parris: Will my right hon. Friend consider improving the appeals procedure in order to make it less cumbersome, increasing the representation of the district councils on the board and putting Ministry of Agriculture nominees on the board?
    Mr. King: I do not think that it would be appropriate to have one appeals system for national parks and another for other parts of the country. We are anxious to improve the whole working of the appeals system so that the Peak park area can benefit as well. I believe that at present there are two farmers on the Peak park planning board. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food makes representations to us about appointments. I am afraid that I have forgotten my hon. Friend's third point.
    Mr. Parris: The question of nominees.
    Mr. Denis Howell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the protection of the national heritage that is contained in our national parks requires a strengthening of national membership on national park committees, rather than a weakening of it? In that respect, can he tell us what arrangements have been made for the proper discussion in the House of proposals arising from topic paper No. 4 on the conservation of the country heritage?
    Mr. King: This is a question of balance between the national interest and the proper preservation of the interests of those who live in national park areas. At
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    the present time in the Peak park, 22 members are appointed by the count councils and only four come from the district councils. I think thtat a fair point can be made in that regard. We are open to representations on the documents that have been issued by the countryside review committee, and we shall consider any points that the right hon. Gentleman has to make.

    Local Authorities (Expenditure)
    Mr. Rookerasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he satisfied with the economies made by local government service since 3 May.
    Mr. Heseltine: I am assured by the local authority associations that the vast majority of authorities are co-operating with my request for reductions in expenditure in 1979–80. I welcome this assurance.
    Mr. Rooker: Is the Secretary of State aware that local authority directors of social services have said that it is mere wishful thinking to believe that any more savings can be made from good housekeeping. Does not that sum up the Government's policy?
    Mr. Heseltine: I am aware that whenever one undergoes rounds of public expenditure constraints everyone involved overstates his case.
    Mr. Bevan: In the interests of encouraging local authorities to effect further economies, will my right hon. Friend consider what advice he will give to local authorities to preclude the setting up of more quangos, one of which is being proposed by the West Midland county council?
    Mr. Heseltine: I have made it clear that I think that one of the most effective ways of achieving the economies that I require is to keep a tight control over the number of people recruited to local government.
    Mr. Marks: Is the Secretary of State aware that one of the groups hardest hit by the Government's economies is that of young families with one wage-earner receiving a wage just above supplementary benefit level? That group will he hit hard by these economies, including the loss of free school meals, yet it has received no benefit from the

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    cuts in income tax, and so on. Is not that group of young families among the hardest hit by the Government's policies?
    Mr. Heseltine: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to see what happens when the decisions are implemented, not when they are widely canvassed as options in advance. He should remember that we are looking for 1½ per cent. less spending this year than last year, and a further 1 per cent. less next year. That is hardly what one could call a ravaging of the Welfare State.
    Mr. Marlow: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the campaign that is being indulged in by Lambeth council and others against the Government's cuts, and that taxpayers' and ratepayers' money is being used to produce newspapers in order to call people on to the streets to demonstrate against the policies of a recently elected Government? Would he care to comment on that?
    Mr. Heseltine: I am aware of the campaign, headed by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), which has given rise to certain claims by a handful of authorities. So far as I understand it, they work on the assumption that the local authorities of all other hon. Members should suffer so that they, this handful, should have more.
    Mr. Alton: Bearing in mind the Secretary of State's assertions that vast amounts of money will be saved by abolishing quangos, will he tell the House how much it will cost to set up the urban development corporations in London Docklands and the Liverpool dockland? Does he agree that it is irresponsible of local authorities to embark upon grandiose schemes when, at the same time, basic services are being cut? What action does the right hon. Gentleman intend to take against his own local authority, which is spending £5 million on new council offices at Crowmarsh in Oxfordshire?
    Mr. Heseltine: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is asking me to involve myself in every decision of every local authority. I have no more intention of doing that with my own local authority than I have with the hon. Gentleman's.
    Mr. Hattersley: On previous Wednesdays the right hon. Gentleman has said that he intends to involve himself in individual decisions of individual local authorities to prevent those that are spending too much from doing so. Where do we stand? Are we to have his promise fulfilled, or is he running away?
    Mr. Heseltine: I think that the right hon. Gentleman has misunderstood me. I am interested in constraining the overall levels of expenditure, not in telling local government how it should achieve those levels.
    Mr. Wigleyasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he is proposing a new system under which precise guidelines will be given to each local authority as to the acceptable expenditure for each of its various activities.
    Mr. Heseltine: No.
    Mr. Wigley: Will the right hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to deny categorically the contents of the report in the Financial Times on Monday 29 October, which suggested that he would introduce a unitary system of grants to local authorities, lay down how much they could spend on each of their services and set out how much they should raise by way of rates to finance them?
    Mr. Heseltine: On Friday I shall be holding the statutory annual consultations with local government on all sorts of matters that are relevant to this year's and next year's financial provision and the structure of rate support grant. If the House will bear with me, I think that it is right not to anticipate that statement.
    Mr. Michael Morris: Although my right hon. Friend is quite rightly resisting the temptation to lay down precise guidelines, will he, nevertheless, encourage the local authority assocations to produce comparative figures of cost per unit, for whatever service is provided, so that the public can judge which authorities give value for money and which do not?
    Mr. Heseltine: I have announced my intention to take powers in the Local Government Bill that is shortly to be introduced to achieve precisely that purpose.
    Mr. Foster: Will the Secretary of State explain to the House how he can produce such comparisons of input without showing the comparisons of output?
    Mr. Heseltine: I believe that it will be possible to deal with a whole range of statistics on both sides of the equation. I shall have wide-ranging consultations, in which I am sure that all hon. Members will want to take part, on precisely which statistics are to be called for. One thing that I shall certainly call for is the publication of manpower figures for each authority so that everybody locally can understand whether his authority is taking on more people or constraining its manpower ceilings.

    Houses (Internal Toilet Facilities)
    Mr. Penhaligonasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his estimate of how long, at the current rate of demolition and improvement, it will be before homes without inside toilets and bathrooms in Great Britain are eliminated.
    Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Between 1971 and 1976, the last date for which information is available, the number of dwellings in England lacking either a bathroom or an inside toilet fell from 2·1 million to 1·2 million. At the same rate of progress we would eliminate such deficiencies in our housing stock within the next 10 years, but this is dependent upon the decisions of many thousands of individual householders.
    Mr. Penhaligon: Will the Minister admit that Government policy has some effect on this issue? Will he let the House know whether he believes that recent policy changes have increased or reduced that time scale?
    Mr. Finsberg: It is difficult to estimate. All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that what we are trying to do is to increase the attack on substandard housing. Our consultation paper of 31 October outlined our proposals for changes in the grant system, which will enable us to direct resources to priority needs.
    Mr. W. Benyon: Is it not a fact that there is now a substantial surplus of accommodation, although there are local shortages? It is therefore essential to concentrate on this aspect rather than on the figures game of building council houses.
    Mr. Finsberg: I am sure that my hon. Friend is correct. The overall picture is what is important. We should not allow ourselves to be diverted by selective statistical quotes.
    Mr. Skinner: Is it not time that the Minister and the rest of his colleagues stopped coming to the House of Commons to try to kid people about the attempt that they are making to improve and modernise homes? Is he aware that Bolsover district council has suffered a reduction of about £1 million as a result of the Tory Government's recent efforts to help? The result is that hundreds of my constituents who thought that their homes would be modernised when the Labour Government were in power now have to wait several years more.
    Mr. Finsberg: I should be glad to investigate that allegation.

    Water Rating System
    Mr. David Atkinsonasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has for reforming the water rating system.
    Mr. King: I appreciate that there is a good deal of concern about how water charges are raised and about their impact on particular groups of consumers. I am considering with the National Water Council a number of aspects of the way in which the system works, but I am not yet in a position to announce any conclusion.
    Mr. Atkinson: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Is he aware that the water rating system is even more unfair to householders than the domestic rating system, as water authorities do not benefit from the rate support grant? Will he consider the universal installation of water meters, which, at £10 per household, would result in a substantial reduction in water charges for the vast majority of house owners?
    Mr. King: One must accept that there are unfairnesses in the way in which water charges are raised. At the same time, it is a relatively economic way of obtaining water funds. However, I should like details from my hon. Friend of his £10 meter, because the figures that I have are considerably in excess of that. Although there would obviously be attractions in moving to that system, the latest estimate

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    that I have is that it would cost more than £1,000 million to move to universal water metering, and that charge would have to be recovered from consumers. This is a difficult issue, but we are studying it intensely.
    Mr. Rooker: Does the Minister accept that the policy advocated by his hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) would, if it were carried out, be the most retrograde step in public health policy in the last 100 years?
    Mr. King: That is a concept which I should like further time to consider. If it is really suggested that there could be circumstances in which the demand for water took some account of the cost of its production that might have some impact on the overall demand and on what would otherwise be a continuing demand for reservoirs, with the resultant loss of good productive land.
    Mr. Rathbone: Will my right hon. Friend consider that a greater degree of accountability by water authorities to himself or to some elected body might help in assessing what were the best rates, the best system of charging those rates and other actions by water authorities?
    Mr. King: I have no proposals to change the present system, under which the majority of boards and water authorities are elected members of local authorities. I should not propose a change which would mean more national control.
    Mr. Denis Howell: Does the Minister's answer mean that he is changing the view and policy announced by the Under-Secretary of State earlier in the Session? Is he aware that the Opposition will reject any proposals to tax—which is what it would mean—the poorest and largest families in the country through the installation of water meters? It would be a most retrograde step. In addition to the cost of metering there would need to be a meter reader service, which would be a further financial imposition upon householders. Will the Minister therefore drop this crazy idea?
    Mr. King: Obviously, the right hon. Gentleman's thoughts have not advanced beyond the penny-farthing stage in the context of the technology of what might be possible in water meter reading. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to consider that the sums that have been
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    discussed in this context are not on a scale that would represent a massive imposition on the poor.

    Gipsies
    Mr. Iain Millsasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will consider changing his Department's policy on not moving on gipsies from Crown property.
    Mr. King: Successive Governments have tolerated gipsies on Government land unless eviction has been essential. We are now reviewing this policy to clarify the extent to which it is still appropriate and whether it represents the best interests of the gipsies and of local communities.
    Mr. Mills: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Is he aware of the problems caused to my constituents at Watton farm by gipsy encampments? But for the help of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, they would still be there. As they have been moved twice, does my right hon. Friend agree that for unsuitable sites such as this one the policy might be changed more rapidly than his review would imply?
    Mr. King: I am aware of the problems to which my hon. Friend refers. This is a difficult issue and will continue to be so until such time as adequate designated official sites are available for gipsies. Clearly, one seeks to operate a humane policy in these matters. Successive Governments have sought not to enforce movement unless it was considered essential.
    Mr. Dan Jones: Is the Minister aware that these so-called gipsies are nothing of the sort; that they are people who escape their proper obligations and, in the process, are a damned nuisance to nearby residents?
    Mr. King: I think that, on reflection the hon. Member will accept that what he has said is not entirely true. There are genuine Romany families, for whom provision must be made. I accept that there is also a grey area of, perhaps, the Irish tinker community and others who might fit more fully into the hon. Gentleman's category. I should not wish to see all gipsies labelled with such accusations.
    Mr. Hawkins: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend that Romany families should be welcomed, but I endorse the view of the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Jones) who talked about the nuisance which these gipsy families cause to genuine families in my constituency by the way in which they batten on to the community, pay no taxes, pay no rates and, in fact—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has asked no question.
    Mr. King: In addition to being a considerable nuisance and disadvantage to many of my hon. Friend's constituents, they do great damage to genuine Romany families who, in many areas, are often very much better behaved and much less anti-social in their behaviour. I recognise the genuine problem of this aspect of the itinerant community.
    Mr. Newens: Does not the number of gipsy families greatly exceed the number that can be accommodated on authorised sites? I remind the House that these people are human beings. Many of them have no option but to put themselves where they are a nuisance to other people. Is not the answer for the Government to take action to see that those local authorities which are not providing sites do so? Is not this also in the interests of local authorities, such as my own, Harlow, which are providing sites?
    Mr. King: The hon. Member will recognise that part of his comment was very much in line with my remark to my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mr. Mills). A statutory duty is laid upon local authorities, and it will be maintained.

    Local Authorities (Expenditure)
    Mr. Beaumont-Darkasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what response he has received to the White Paper on relaxing controls over local government.
    Mr. Heseltine: I have received comments from the local authority associations, individual local authorities, the Confederation of British Industry, the Trades Union Congress and a number of other interested bodies and members of the public.
    Mr. Beaumont-Dark: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Will he allay some of the anxiety of metropolitan county councils that the proposals might remove the freedom of local government to finance capital expenditure by good housekeeping if they are able to do so? We should leave the responsibility for local government expenditure with local authorities if they are able to exercise it by good housekeeping and by the best means possible.
    Mr. Heseltine: We have announced proposals to introduce ceilings on local government capital expenditure, but within those ceilings we have also announced changes that will give local government much greater flexibility as to how it uses its capital resources.
    Mr. Frank Allaun: If controls on local authorities are to be relaxed, will that apply to the sale of council houses?
    Mr. Heseltine: We have made it clear that we put our proposals to the electorate at the last election, and we have an overwhelming mandate to carry them into law.
    Sir Anthony Meyer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a potential difficulty for councils facing a situation in which they must embark on large capital expenditure in order to meet an employment crisis, such as that in northeast Wales, but find that the new proposals seriously limit their freedom of manoeuvre?
    Mr. Heseltine: That would depend entirely upon the ceilings that we set and the method by which we distribute the overall resources, together with other Government programmes.
    Mr. Straw: What will the Secretary of State say to Conservative-controlled councils, such as North Norfolk and Guildford, which object as much as Labour-controlled authorities do to the dictatorial central controls by which the Government are to take over the sale of council houses regardless of how that will damage the ability of those councils to meet their local housing need?
    Mr. Heseltine: I contest the assumption that this will damage the ability of authorities to meet their council house needs. I say to them what I have said to everyone else: the council house

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    tenant is being offered one of the most generous opportunities that have ever been put before tenants. Nothing that the Opposition are able to do will stop us from carrying that to the statute book.

    New International Airport
    Mr. Haselhurstasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if his Department has carried out a survey of the environmental impact of a two-runway international airport at any of the six sites short listed by the Advisory Committee on Airports Policy.
    Mr. King: I understand that environmental implications are being taken into account by the study group on South-East airports, whose report, together with the views of the Advisory Committee on Airports Policy, is expected to be submitted to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade shortly.
    Mr. Haselhurst: Has my right hon. Friend discovered any means of costing the environmental loss which the foundation of a new international airport would undoubtedly cause at any one of the six sites short listed, so that this can be compared with the other factors which are no doubt to be costed in the advisory committee's report?
    Mr. King: I am unable to comment on what detailed work has been done on this matter, as we have not yet received the study group's report. However, this and other considerations will obviously become of great interest when the report is received and when any further action that may flow from it is considered.
    Mr. Allan Roberts: Will the Minister abandon the idea of a third London airport, for environmental and other considerations, and accept that it would be much more sensible and much cheaper for a Government committed to public expenditure cuts to look at a regional alternative? Will the Minister consider Liverpool and Manchester in terms of taking the trade and business that would come to a third London airport, because Manchester can take 6 million passengers per year, and is taking only 2 million now?
    Mr. King: While we obviously have a close interest in the environmental implications concerned, that question should
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    more properly be directed to the Secretary of State for Trade.

    Improvement Grants
    Mr. Altonasked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many improvement grants were paid in 1978–79; how many are likely to be paid in 1979–80; and if he will make a statement on current levels of grants.
    Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: It is estimated that about 59,000 grants were paid in 1978–79 for the conversion, improvement and repair of private dwellings in England. I am unable to offer an estimate of the number which will be paid in the current financial year, but in the first six months of 1979–80 an estimated 32,300 grants were paid. This compares with 28,500 in the same period in 1978–79. We are keeping the eligible expense limits for grants under review.
    Mr. Alton: In view of the disappointing number of applications for grants, is the Minister prepared to review the upper limits in housing action and general improvement areas, as well as considering environmental grants for upgrading the areas around people's homes in housing action areas?
    Mr. Finsberg: We are keeping all these matters under review. Less than a quarter of all improvement grant applications approved relate to total eligible expenditure at or near the maximum.
    Mr. Hill: If my hon. Friend wishes to make a further onslaught on increasing the number of improvement grants, will he consider going back to the original scheme, under which small builders were able to get improvement grants and then sell the houses on the open market?
    Mr. Finsberg: I shall certainly have another look at that idea.

    General Development Order
    Mr. Chapmanasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he intends to submit to Parliament proposals to amend the general development order.
    Mr. King: I am considering what extensions can be made to permitted development to reduce the number of planning applications that have to be considered. I hope to issue a consultation paper shortly.
    Mr. Chapman: I appreciate that the arguments are finely balanced on whether more minor development proposals ought to be taken out of the development control procedures. However, if my right hon. Friend decides against excluding more minor proposals, will he bring forward speedier and simpler procedures for dealing with such minor development proposals?
    Mr. King: I appreciate the sense behind my hon. Friend's suggestion. However, these are matters which we shall have to consider in the light of the response to our consultation paper.
    Mr. Guy Barnett: As the Government, on several occasions, have expressed the view—rightly, I believe—that non-conforming development in residential areas can be a good thing, will they look very carefully at the general development order and recognise the effect that small industrial extensions can have on neighbours?
    Mr. King: That is one of the points that we shall keep very much in mind.

    Local Authorities (Cost-effectiveness)
    Mr. Bob Dunnasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what proposals he has to encourage local authorities to compare their cost-efficiency in the provision of services with that of other local authorities.
    Mr. Heseltine: I shall be seeking powers this Session to require local authorities to publish more information about the cost of their services in a form which will enable comparisons of performance to be made. My proposals are outlined in a consultation paper published on 24 October, a copy of which is in the Library.
    Mr. Dunn: Will the Secretary of State please make a statement at the earliest opportunity about the action that he intends to take against those local authorities which are giving or will be giving poor service to ratepayers? Will he make his views known to the councils' associations? Will he take action against London authorities, such as Lambeth, which intend to persist in working against the Government's policy?
    Mr. Heseltine: It is my responsibility to set ceilings and overall targets. It is a matter for the local democratic processes to discuss the quality of services provided by individual authorities.
    Mr. Cryer: Will the Minister comment on how he views the presence of Lord Bellwin in his Department to assess the efficiency of local authorities? Will Lord Bellwin try to impose the values that he obtained at Staflex International—that is, complete closure, bankruptcy and thousands on the dole? Is that the aim?
    Mr. Heseltine: I think that the hon. Member will recognise that Lord Bellwin has substantial experience in running a major authority. The Department aims to take advantage of the benefit of that experience. If the Government of whom the hon. Gentleman was once a member had ever listened to experts, they might have governed rather more effectively.
    Mr. John Evans: Is the Secretary of State aware that many senior local government officers are becoming increasingly alarmed at the dictatorial determination of the Government to reduce them to mere agents of central Government?
    Mr. Heseltine: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should criticise this Government, when he spent six years in a Government who were trying to achieve precisely that. It is the elected representatives in local government who must have the last say about local priorities, and I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have appreciated that.

    Housing Bill
    Mr. Bevanasked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to publish the Housing Bill.
    Mr. Heseltine: I expect to introduce the Bill before the House rises for the Christmas Recess.
    Mr. Bevan: Will my right hon. Friend ensure that in the Bill there will be a further development of home improvements so as to increase substantially the housing stock in the private sector?
    Mr. Heseltine: A number of proposals will be included in the legislation for that purpose.

IMMIGRATION RULES
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. William Whitelaw): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a statement about immigration.
I am today publishing a White Paper setting out the Government's proposals for revising the immigration rules. The Immigration Act 1971 requires the Home Secretary to lay before Parliament a statement of any changes in the immigration rules, and the statement may be disapproved by a resolution of either House. My purpose in publishing our proposals as a White Paper is to enable them to be debated before I lay that statement of the new rules.
The White Paper is the result of a comprehensive review. The new rules will be clearer, easier to operate and firmer in a number of critical areas.
We shall end the automatic right of entry of the husband or fiancé of a woman settled in this country, but it is not my intention to keep out the husband or fiancé of a woman who was born in the United Kingdom and whose marriage is not contracted for immigration purposes. The object of the new rules is to prevent the exploitation of marriage as an instrument of primary immigration. We cannot permit that to continue.
I have not overlooked the fact that some girls will have been born abroad because their parents happened to be out of the country—for example, in Crown service or business—at the time of their birth. It is my intention to consider such cases sympathetically for favourable treatment outside the rules.
We undertook to end the practice of allowing permanent settlement for those who come here for a temporary stay. The new rules provide that visitors and students will not be able to remain for another temporary purpose if that carries with it the prospect of eventual settlement. Visitors will be prohibited from taking employment. People who wish to set up in business or stay here as self-employed persons or as persons of independent means will have to meet stricter requirements and will need first to obtain entry clearance.
We undertook to limit the entry of parents, grandparents and children over
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18 to a small number of urgent compassionate cases. Children aged 18 or over will qualify for settlement only where the circumstances are of the most strongly compassionate nature, although special consideration will be given to daughters under 21 who formed part of the family unit overseas and have no other relative to whom they can turn. Parents and grandparents aged 65 or over and widowed mothers already have to show that they are wholly or mainly dependent on children in this country who can support and accommodate them. In future they will also have to show that they are without other relatives in their own country to whom they can turn and that they have a standard of living substantially below that of their own country. Parents and grandparents under 65 will not qualify for entry save in the most exceptional circumstances.
We also said that we would severely restrict the issue of work permits. That is not a matter for the immigration rules, but my hon, and learned Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Employment is answering a written question on the subject today.
The White Paper explains that the Government will consider, on the basis of the present rules, all applications made before today.
The other changes in the White Paper are the result of the comprehensive review that I have mentioned. Obscurities have been cleared up, anomalies have been removed, and the scope for abuse and evasion of the control has been reduced.
The Government believe that firm immigration control is essential in order to achieve good community relations. The new rules will not affect our commitment to certain United Kingdom passport holders being admitted under the special voucher scheme, or to men lawfully settled here who wish to be joined by their wives and young children. We shall continue to welcome the genuine visitor and the genuine student. What we are determined to do is to deal strictly with those who seek to evade or manipulate the control.
Mr. Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Since the whole racialist document—the White Paper—is clearly the work of the Prime Minister, surely

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the right hon. Lady should have made the statement.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member knows that that is not a point of order for me.
Mr. Merlyn Rees: In the White Paper the Government set out a comprehensive system of new immigration rules. Those rules cover all aspects of controlling immigration from all parts of the world. The Home Secretary said that as a result of the review obscurities have been cleared up, anomalies removed, and so forth.
We note that the Government will provide time to debate the proposals before the new rules are laid, but comprehensive new immigration rules need comprehensive consideration. I hope that the Government will consider it necessary to have longer than one and a half hours to debate the order. There are a great many issues involved, and in the to-ing and fro-ing today we shall deal only with the main ones.
A little over a year ago, in preparation for an election, the present Prime Minister talked of the country being swamped. That was not true. The statistics that the Home Office published clearly show that the country is not being swamped. Primary immigration is over, and has been for some time.
There were three proposals discussed at the time of the election, and Tory right hon, and hon. Members went to the country on those proposals. There was talk of a register. I congratulate the Home Secretary on dropping that proposal. It was nonsense before the election, and it is nonsense now. I also congratulate the Home Secretary on dropping the quota. The figures show that that, too, is unnecessary. There was also talk of a restriction on all husbands and fiancés, and that proposal has been limited and now effectively concerns only Asians.
The proposal on husbands and fiancés is designed specifically to deal with Asians. Many hon. Members, such as the hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. Atkins), will be supporting a proposal that will act against a large number of their constituents.
When I was a junior Minister in 1969 I put something through the House which was not very different from what the Home Secretary is doing now. But I
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was wrong. It was altered in 1974 when my predecessor, Mr. Roy Jenkins—said—[Interruption]—It is no good hon. Members laughing. This is very important for those hon. Members with Asian constituents. Mr. Jenkins said:
"When I first considered this I believe that I put too high the likely immigration consequences and did not fully allow for the stark and unacceptable nature of the discrimination. On further consideration of all the issues involved in this difficult problem, I am persuaded that there are no sufficiently compelling reasons for denying the parties to a marriage the freedom of choice that I believe they should have."—[Official Report, 27 June 1974; Vol. 785, c. 875.]
There are aspects of this document that must be looked at in detail. One realises the importance of this matter when one considers that an entry clearance officer on the Indian Sub-continent will not be able to give a clearance where the parties to the marriage have not yet met. That simply means that if there are swift visits to the sub-continent everything will be all right.
Mr. Ronald Bell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is there any limit to the privilege accorded to Front Bench questions?
Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that we are not debating this matter today. We are dealing with questions after a statement.
Mr. Rees: This is a most important matter. Perhaps the Home Secretary could explain why the Government have left out two and a half of the three proposals that they originally put before the electorate and why the bits that they have kept are racist and reactionary?
Mr. Hill: This is ridiculous.
Mr. Rees: The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. Hill) would do well to consider these matters—
Mr. Hill: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I believe that the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) is taking advantage of the House.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman was about to ask a question.
Mr. Rees: Yes, I am about to ask another question on top of the batch that I have already asked. The Home Office has facts and figures about overstaying. The inquiry into overstaying and abuse

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has not yet been completed, but when it is I hope that the facts will be put before the House.—[Hoyt. MEMBERS: "Ask a Question."]—I am asking a question. I want to know whether the facts will be put before the House. Obviously some hon. Members do not consider this matter important. There is some obscurity on the question when the rules, which have not yet been laid, will come into effect. Can they really take effect when the White Paper and the rules have not yet been debated? Is it a fact that hon. Members must go to their Asian constituents and tell them that the change has already been made? I agree that the immigration rules should be looked at—
Mr. Neubert: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not the convention of the House that any Front Bench statements made in reply to a Minister's statement should be shorter than the original statement, or at least as long, but not longer by a ratio of two to one? [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."]
Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that when there is a great deal of emotion in the House hon. Members would be well advised to leave it to me to do what I can to ensure that our affairs are conducted propertly. Certainly we have a set procedure for asking a series of questions of a Minister.
Mr. Rees: As I was saying, the immigration rules need to be looked at from time to time. Does the Home Secretary agree that primary immigration is over, and that what he is doing today is pandering to those who think otherwise? In doing this he will do great harm to community relations with proposals that are sexist, racist and indefensible.
Mr. Whitelaw: I shall seek to answer the questions of the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees). I agree that a comprehensive review of the immigration rules is very important and needs to be undertaken from time to time. I believe that it is right that it should be undertaken now.
I agree that it is important that there should be a debate and an opportunity for reflection. I understand that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has agreed that there should be a full day's debate on the White
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Paper. In publishing the White Paper at 11 am we gave hon. Members the opportunity of seeing it in good time before this afternoon's statement. In doing that, and in agreeing to a debate, we have behaved in a thoroughly proper manner.
I wish to make it clear that this is a statement about the immigration rules as such. Matters such as the register and quotas would require legislation. This is different from the rules. We have certainly not dropped those proposals at this stage.
The right hon. Member said that he was wrong in 1969. His right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and he acted then when the figures were very much smaller than they are today, but a little death-bed repentance is not much good. He quoted what Mr. Roy Jenkins said in 1974. I wonder whether he overlooked what Mr. Jenkins' Minister of State said at the same time, namely, that
"some 200 or 300 husbands or fiancés are admitted because of these kinds of considerations from the Commonwealth each year. … The danger is that if this matter were to be mishandled by the present Government or by their successors we could experience a substantial new wave of immigration."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 March 1974; Vol. 350, c. 794–5.]
Just a few hundred were affected then, and now the figure is several thousand.
The right hon. Member asked me about the retrospective position. Those who are in the queue today will be processed. That is important. I have answered all his questions clearly, except on the aspect of overstaying. The overstaying report was quite properly commissioned by the right hon. Member for Leeds, South and we shall certainly be prepared to see that the House discusses it. I am bound to say that what has been revealed so far is not satisfactory. I do not believe that the arrangements that we have today for checking on overstaying are in any way satisfactory. Indeed, this is a most unsatisfactory position. The House and the country should recognise it, and we should seek steps to put it right.
Mr. David Steel: Does not the statement that the Home Secretary has just made run completely counter to his own oft-repeated statement that people once settled in this country should be treated equally before the law? Is it not true that the family life—of which the Prime

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Minister has often spoken—of certain people in this country is already disrupted by the present immigration rules, and that still more will be disrupted by these rules? Has the right hon. Gentleman considered what is happening to the nature of our society, that it pretends that it requires a set of squalid and mean-spirited proposals like these to check abuses by a few hundred people?
Mr. Whitelaw: I do not accept for one moment that these are mean-minded proposals. I believe that we in this country are absolutely entitled to say that we are not prepared to allow marriage to be exploited for the purpose of gaining primary immigration into this country. That is what is happening, and it is not right.
Mr. Edward Gardner: I recognise and welcome the new rules proposed in the White Paper as necessary, comprehensive and realistic, but does my right hon. Friend agree that ultimately the only way to deal with immigration problems on a permanent basis is to scrap the obsolete and absurd nationality laws and replace them with a new nationality Act?
Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful to my hon, and learned Friend, who has made a considerable study of that proposal. We have committed ourselves to introducing a nationality Act. The many other subjects of legislation coming before the House may mean that the Act will not get on to the statute book this Session, but I am considering publishing a White Paper setting out the Government's clear proposals on the matter.
Mr. J. Enoch Powell: What estimate has the right hon. Gentleman made of the reduction that these changes will bring about in the number of persons from the new Commonwealth and Pakistan accepted for settlement, and in the projection of that population at the end of the century?
Mr. Whitelaw: I expect the effect of these rules in particular on the present numbers to be a reduction of between 3,000 and 4,000 a year.
Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Why, in all that he has said so far, has the Home Secretary avoided mention of the worst feature of this squalid document, namely,
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that he has introduced a new rule that will prevent a marriage where the parties have not met? That is not intended to hit a marriage of convenience, which is met by other rules; it is intended to hit the genuine arranged marriage of Asian girls, whether or not they were born in this country. In doing that, the right hon. Gentleman introduces a racialist difference between one British citizen and another. Has he not mentioned it because he is ashamed of it?
Mr. Whitelaw: Has not the hon. Gentleman, with his considerable experience of these matters, come to the view held by many hon. Members? I remember the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Bidwell) telling me that in the future it will increasingly be the practice that Asian girls in this country will wish to marry Asian boys in this country. I should have thought that that was a position that we should encourage. I cannot understand why that should not proceed, nor can I see anything wrong in the way in which our country has worked over generations—that people who wish to get married should actually have met before they decide to do so.
Sir Paul Bryan: In spite of the Opposition's protests, am I not right in saying that my right hon. Friend's statement is in accord with the Conservative Party manifesto, which was endorsed by the electorate only six months ago?
Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is substantially correct.
Mr. Deakins: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his disgraceful statement will be treated with dismay not merely in areas of high immigrant population but in all areas concerned with good community relations? Will he be a little more explicit about the position of fiancés in South Asia in the queue already awaiting entry clearance and an interview?
Mr. Whitelaw: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's remarks. I do not believe that the vast majority of the Asian community in this country will think it unreasonable that we should make sensible arrangements, which these are.
The hon. Gentleman very properly asked about those in the queue. They will be processed, and therefore their position is safeguarded.
Mr. Stanbrook: Will my right hon. Friend make it clear to the Opposition and all those who talk of racism and sexism in the proposed immigration rules that this country is governed in the interests of its inhabitants and not those of immigrants?
Mr. Whitelaw: I believe that this country is governed in the interests of all its citizens, and it is on that basis that I have put forward these proposals.
Miss Joan Lestor: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that he has now created several different categories of people who stand in different relationships to the law of this land? Will he bear in mind that the attempt to buy off those women born abroad of British parents who happen to be white—in that he will exercise his discretion as to whom we may or may not marry—will in no way mitigate our opposition to what he is doing to our Asian sisters?
Mr. Whitelaw: I do not think that what the hon. Lady said is entirely correct. If a woman is born in this country, whether she is Asian or whatever, she will be allowed to bring in her husband or fiancé.
Miss Lestor: Is the right hon. Gentleman going to look him over before I bring him in?
Mr. Whitelaw: What I meant when I referred to a discretion was that I would treat sympathetically, outside the rules, those who may have been born of British parents who were on Crown service or business abroad. The others have the right.
Mr. George Gardiner: Will my right hon. Friend state whether it is correct that the Conservative manifesto proposals for a register and a quota have been dropped, or whether it is simply a matter of deferring such action until later in this Parliament?
Mr. Whitelaw: I made it clear that these matters would require substantive legislation. There may be no place for such substantive legislation this Session. What I have done is to make what I believe are sensible changes in the immigration rules, and those are what I have put before the House today.
Mr. Sever: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many thousands of families in the ethnic minority groups will be desperately disappointed by the sordid and squalid measure that is proposed today? How does he square what he has proposed in the White Paper with the statement of his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 4 May about creating one united nation?
Mr. Whitelaw: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's statement. I believe that what we have done is to make a sensible, plain change in the rules—a change that I believe, in the long run will be in the interests of everyone in this country. May I refer once again to all the comments that it is racially discriminatory? I should have thought that it was perfectly clear that any woman born in this country, of whatever nationality, colour, race or creed, would be entitled to bring in her husband or fiancé.
Mr. Stokes: Is my right hon. Friend aware that while the new rules will be welcomed there will be widespread disappointment throughout the country that the actual effect of the rules will be to reduce the huge numbers coming in every year by only 3,000?
Mr. Whitelaw: I note what my hon. Friend says. At the last election all parties accepted the commitment that the wives and children of heads of households who were here on 1 January 1973 should be allowed to come into the country to unite their families. We all accepted that United Kingdom passport holders would be entitled to come into the country in diminishing numbers and that there would be no question of anyone who is legally in the country being sent away for any purpose. Those important matters were set out at the time of the election by all parties. We should remember that that is the background against which the changes have been made.
Mr. Bidwell: Sad as they are, not only will these proposals affect Asian communities in Britain; there will also be an effect on British public opinion. As the debate proceeds, will the right hon. Gentleman consider the aspects of the White Paper that contain matters of gross sex discrimination? Western Europe is moving against such thought. The movement of free labour means that white

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people are under few restrictions. Will the right hon. Gentleman also consider carefully the human problems that will arise from the exclusion of an old lady in the Indian Sub-continent who cannot join most of her children in this country, albeit that she may have some land over there? I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a humane Tory.
Hon. Members: The right hon. Gentleman was humane.
Mr. Bidwell: I ask the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to pay attention to what was said by the all-Party Select Committee. Why has there been no agreement on the question of husband and male fiancés, and why are we to disturb the pattern of old people's entitlement to come here?
Mr. Whitelaw: I shall always respond to the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Bidwell). In his constituency he has a particular problem, with which the House is well acquainted. Over a period of time he has handled that problem with a great deal of skill in difficult circumstances. I certainly respond to him. We shall listen carefully to the points that he makes. I believe that what we are doing will not be received with the hysteria that I have heard from the Opposition Benches. We have tightened the rules on dependants, but many of those rules operated under the previous Government. I do not complain of those rules. However, we have sought to tighten them and I would have thought that to be reasonable. No doubt during the debate we shall come to the other matters that the hon. Gentleman raised.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that there is another statement to follow. The present statement will be subject to a full debate. I hope that those hon. Members whom I call will ask brief questions, in order that other hon. Members may have the opportunity to speak.
Mr. Scott: I have a specific and brief question. How will the rules affect an infant female child who is born overseas but adopted by an indigenous family in this country? When that child reaches marriageable age will she be treated in the same way as her natural brothers and sisters, or differently?
Mr. Whitelaw: I know that such a case offers many complications. Adop
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tion has sometimes been used as a means of evading the rules and it is important to remember that. However, I shall consider carefully what my hon. Friend said.
Mr. Greville Janner: Is the Minister aware that in Leicester, where there are thousands of Asians, his statement will be greeted by them not with hysteria but with grave anxiety and upset? Is he further aware that they will feel that the Government are not the right people to choose whom a girl should marry, and that it is a matter for the girl alone? Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the applications that are now in the pipeline, whether for fiancés or for children over 18, will continue to be treated under the present rules?
Mr. Whitelaw: I note what the hon, and learned Gentleman says. Many Asian girls in this country would wish to make their own choice. Indeed, that may well happen after the change in the rules rather than at present.
Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Will my right hon. Friend discuss with our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services how another ground of abuse can be avoided by making sponsors of dependent relatives legally chargeable for their maintenance before the Supplementary Benefits Commission?
Mr. Whitelaw: That is a matter that I should have to consider with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services.
Mr. Mellor: I note what my right hon. Friend says about discretion. However, is he aware that it will cause considerable dismay and confusion to British people who are working abroad that it will make a difference to their female child if she is born in Paris rather than in Putney?
Mr. Whitelaw: We believe that the birth is a clear and sensible point to take. However, I am aware of the feeling in all parts of the community and I shall be prepared to re-examine the matter before the debate.
Mr. Kaufman: The right hon. Gentleman seems confident that the reaction in the country will not be the one that he met with in the House. Therefore, will he come to Manchester, address my Asian constituents, and answer their questions

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on the matter? Will he also clarify paragraph 13 in the document, which is open to wide misinterpretation? There it is stated that applications under the old rules will be considered up to today, but that such applications will be legally possible right up to the laying of the new rules. The implication seems to be that applications that can legally be made under the present rules will no longer be acceptable after the publication of the White Paper, which has no force in law. Will he clarify that matter?
Mr. Whitelaw: Whatever the right hon. Gentleman or anybody else accuses me of, he cannot accuse me of being afraid to talk to anybody at any time under any circumstances. Of course, I shall do so, but I do not wish to do so under the auspices of the right hon. Gentleman. I thought that I had made clear the proposals about the transitional period. All those people who are now in the fiancé queue will be considered under the present rules.
Mr. John Carlisle: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that by amending his manifesto commitment that we would end the concession to all male fiancés—it has been changed to women born in this country—any difference will be felt in the vast traffic that comes into the country?
Mr. Whitelaw: I believe that our proposals are correct and that they will make a considerable difference in the numbers. If we attempted to apply the restrictions to wives and female fiancées, nationality and immigration legislation would have to be altered. We would also break our pledge to the wives and children of Commonwealth citizens who were settled here before 1973. I have made clear that the Government stand by that pledge.
Mr. Stallard: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept the widespread belief that the new rules already operate and that immigration matters have been tightened up since the election? Will he assure the House that no change in the instructions to immigration officers will be given until the House has passed the necessary legislation?
Mr. Whitelaw: I should like to make absolutely clear that since the election no new instructions have been given to the immigration service. We are operating
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exactly the same arrangements. The right hon. Member for Leeds, South knows, even if some of his hon. Friends do not, that the rules require very difficult decisions to be made by the Minister concerned. The hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) knows that better than most. The pressure from hon. Members on my hon. Friend the Minister of State and anyone who occupies that job are serious. I do not want the House to be in any doubt about that. Difficult decisions have to be made in each case. I have made some myself, one of which became clear today. I make some in consultation with my hon. Friend the Minister of State.
The instructions to immigration officers are the same. In defence of the immigration service, and in view of some of the things that are said about it from time to time, I should say that hon. Members should realise that in 1978 there were about 50 million passenger movements into and out of this country, half of which involved people who were subject to immigration control. They all had to be dealt with by the immigration service, under stressful conditions.
I accept that the House has every right to criticise me and other Ministers, but I hope that it will not criticise members of the immigration service, who are working under very great difficulties.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I propose to call four more hon. Members from each side of the House.
Mr. Budgen: May I remind my right hon. Friend of paragraph 83 of the Franks report, which said that it would take at least 18 months from a decision being taken by the Government for a register of dependants to come into effect? Will my right hon. Friend agree that because he is not prepared to use his considerable political authority in the Cabinet to obtain time for legislation to introduce such a register it could not come into effect before two and a half years from today?
Mr. Whitelaw: My hon. Friend must, as I must, judge our priorities. In terms of the priorities in the legislative programme that the Government are putting before the House I think that my hon. Friend will agree that the measures in

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that programme are ones to which he would wish to attach the highest priority. The matter to which he referred would require substantive legislation, and if it does not find a place in the legislative programme it will be because there are other matters that I believe—and I think that my hon. Friend would agree with me—have a higher priority.
Mr. Cryer: Will the Secretary of State confirm that under the Labour Government the rules were operated extremely tightly, that there is not, and has not been, mass immigration, and that the rules have therefore moved on to a tighter racist basis than previously? Does he agree that the Government are concerned only with uniting white families and are prepared to keep brown and black families apart?
Mr. Marlow: They can go home and rejoin their families in the country of origin.
Mr. Cryer: If the Secretary of State is concerned that immigration officers should not be criticised, will he undertake that if evidence is produced to show that the rules are being abused because of the general atmosphere engendered by the racist attitude of the Government and that immigration officers are found to be abusing their powers, he will resign?
Mr. Whitelaw: That is a sort of "Have you stopped beating your wife?" question. I am prepared to stand up for the immigration officers and for the policies that I have put forward. If the House repudiates those policies, or if my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister wishes to get rid of me, of course I shall resign. However, I must make clear that I shall stand up for the immigration officers, as did the right hon. Member for Leeds, South.
I do not accept that there has been any change in their position because of the change of Government. If that sort of accusation is made, it must be clearly substantiated. It means that those in the public services change their attitudes between one Government and another, and that is a dangerous accusation to make in this country.
Mr. Hal Miller: Has my right hon. Friend considered the report of the Select Committee on the subject of immigration,
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its concern about male fiancés and husbands, and its recommendation that a continuing study should be undertaken and figures should be published? Will he undertake to publish those figures, with other immigration figures, in an accessible form in the Official Report before a debate is held on the new rules?
Mr. Whitelaw: I can give my hon. Friend some figures about fiancés. In 1975 there were barely 1,000. Three years later the number had trebled, to more than 3,000. Even with the lower priority accorded them by the right hon. Member for Leeds, South last year, the figure was still over 2,200. Of those, about three-quarters came from India and Pakistan. Those are important figures. I will consider what my hon. Friend said.
Mr. R. C. Mitchell: The Home Secretary has repeatedly said that an Asian girl in this country and her intended fiancé in India or Pakistan should meet before marriage. Under which section of the immigration rules will the fiancé in India or Pakistan be allowed to come here to meet his intended wife?
Mr. Whitelaw: As my hon. Friend the Minister of State has advised me—he knows all about these matters—the fiancé can come as a visitor in the first place.
Mr. Mitchell: That is not so. The right hon. Gentleman does not know what he is talking about.
Mr. Ronald Bell: Since the White Paper, in spite of the heat that it has generated, does virtually nothing, can my right hon. Friend say whether his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Mr. Stokes) means that he does not intend to do anything significant about immigration at all?
Mr. Whitelaw: I am surprised that my hon, and learned Friend should say that about proposed changes which would reduce immigration by 3,000 or 4,000 a year and would go a long way towards stopping the one remaining source of male primary immigration at a time of great strains on our resources. I think that that is thoroughly worth while.
Mr. Thomas Cox: Is the Home Secretary aware that as a result of his statement we have for the first time in our history a proposal that "If you are black

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or brown, you are to be a second-class citizen of the United Kingdom". That is what the right hon. Gentleman's statement means. How does the right hon. Gentleman expect Asian communities, which are some of the most law-abiding and hard working in this country, to see any benefit in working for good community relations in the areas where they live? The real victors following his statement are the thugs of the National Front, who will use it at every opportunity.
Mr. Whitelaw: I find the hon. Gentleman's statement surprising, inflammatory and unnecessary. I do not understand how he can make those remarks about a statement that preserves the position of wives and children of the heads of families already here and preserves the position of United Kingdom passport holders. How can he describe as racially discriminatory a proposal that girls born in this country, of any race, colour or creed, have exactly the same rights? I do not understand what he means.
Mr. Alan Clark: To what extent did the entry of husbands and male fiancés increase after the concession by the then Labour Home Secretary, Mr. Roy Jenkins?
Mr. Whitelaw: The restrictions were eased in 1974. The total accepted for settlement as husbands, fiancés or in some temporary capacity doubled between 1973 and 1974, and almost doubled again in 1975. It has remained broadly at that level since then.
Mr. Arthur Davidson: Why is it necessary to make life even more difficult for those elderly parents and grandparents who want to join their families here? Has the right hon. Gentleman some evidence of large-scale trafficking in 80-year olds? Is he not aware that to come here now they have to meet the condition of being wholly maintained by their families? What a mean, nasty little measure this is.
Mr. Whitelaw: I find the hon. and learned Gentleman's statement surprising, because under the previous Government—he rightly stated the position—they had to show that they were wholly or mainly dependent on children in this country. We are saying that in addition they should
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have to show that they are without any other relatives to whom they could turn in their own country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] I will tell hon. Members why. Is it so unreasonable that people who have relatives with whom they can stay in their own country should stay with those relatives? We are prepared to take those who do not have relatives in those circumstances, but surely where there are other relatives with whom they can live it is reasonable that they should stay with them there.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Peter Walker, to make a statement.
Mr. John Grant: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it reasonable for the Home Secretary to present this appalling document, which refers to the work permits system, but instead of allowing hon. Members to question him on that aspect to skulk behind a planted question put down for written answer by one of his hon. Friends?
Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for me.
Mr. Jim Marshall: In his statement the Home Secretary has created a large area of uncertainty, which will create distress to many people in Leicester. The uncertainty arises from the interregnum, and the presentation of the White Paper to the House and the laying of the rules. If I understood the Home Secretary correctly, he said that until the new rules are laid applications in the pipeline are to be processed and perhaps a decision made under the present rules. That does not go far enough. It is that which will cause the distress. Will the existing conditions apply to the people already in the queue, with the laying of the new rules?
Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not something on which I can rule.
Mr. Kaufman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I give notice that at the end of the statement by the Minister of Agriculture I shall be making an application under Standing Order No. 9 on this matter?
Mr. Onslow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I put it to you that in the interests of more certain and efficient government it is advisable that this House

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should know whether the Home Secretary has sent instructions to immigration officers to operate the system that he has outlined today instead of the system of immigration control by interminable delay, which has been our shameful inheritance from the last Labour Government?
Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it still the rule of the House that Ministers should not mislead the House? On a number of occasions the Home Secretary said that these new rules treat British-born citizens equally, whether they are black or white. He knows, however, that one of the rules treats an Asian girl differently, because she will not be allowed to marry according to her culture. Surely that is misleading the House. Should not the Home Secretary apologise?
Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members are raising with me now points of debate, not points of order.
Mr. Douglas-Mann: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would it not be in the interests of the House for the discussion to continue for some time? The Secretary of State made a statement that dealt substantially with iancés and husbands. The White Paper will also affect substantially a large number of aged
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relatives. On my interpretation, the White Paper will virtually stop any dependent relatives entering under any circumstances, because no dependent relative is likely to have a standard of living below that—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I have been very tolerant. I have been allowing points to be made which hon. Members know are not points of order. I shall take another two and then we must move on.
Mr. Anderson: Will the Home Secretary comment on this point?—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is supposed to be making a point of order.
Mr. Anderson: I thought that I had been called to put a question.
Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is a little late.
Mr. Stan Thorne: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I give you notice of my intention to raise a matter under Standing Order No. 9 in regard to the statement we have just heard?
Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not hear, but I was given notice a few moments ago that someone else proposes to raise the matter under Standing Order No. 9.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY (COUNCIL OF AGRICULTURE MINISTERS MEETING)
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Peter Walker): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the Council of Agriculture Ministers in Brussels on 12–13 November at which I represented the United Kingdom.
No decision was reached on the sheep-meat regime, and further discussions will take place at the December meeting of the Council. In the discussion that took place, we had support from other member States for our view that there should be no form of intervention. The French and Irish Ministers seem no longer to be pressing for a renegotiation of the GATT arrangements with New Zealand and other third countries—a proposal rejected by the Commission, the United Kingdom and all other member States.
I made it clear that any transitional system of premium payments would have to be fair to the United Kingdom and not result in the British taxpayer simply paying for other countries to retain benefits that arose from the illegal import controls imposed by the French Government.
The Council discussed proposed measures on wine, structures, alcohol and potatoes but no progress was made.
Mr. Mason: The House is obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for his statement and appreciates especially that he regularly reports back from the meetings of the Agriculture and Fisheries Councils even though, as he has indicated today, there is little progress to report.
On sheepmeat, will he assure the House that at the December Council he will protect New Zealand's right to export to the Common Market and particularly to the United Kingdom? Also, although at this stage intervention seems to be ruled out, if he is pressed further at the December Council, will he state that France, on the basis of its own social and political grounds, can fund intervention itself and that there should be no funds for that purpose from the Common Market or the United Kingdom? Will he continue to bear in mind the cost of free access of sheepmeat to
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France on the British consumer? As he knows, British sheepmeat could rise in price by up to 20 per cent. to the British consumer, with a possible knock-on effect on other meat prices as well. What safeguards has he in mind for the British consumer?
As for our own sheep farmers, has the right hon. Gentleman anything to say today about the hill livestock compensatory allowances? If any group of people in the agricultural community in Britain has suffered in recent months and has a genuine case for help, it is the sheep farmers on the hills. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to say something positive about that today.
Were there no discussions on milk, on the co-responsibility levy, on sugar and on a quota, and were there any preparatory discussions on the restructuring of the CAP?
Mr. Walker: Sugar and the restructuring of the CAP were not on the agenda. We dealt with those matters at the previous meeting. I guess that they will reappear on the agenda at the December meeting.
I can give a categorical assurance that under no circumstances would we change the present arrangements for New Zealand unless it were at the request of the New Zealand Government on a voluntary arrangement that they wanted for their benefit. If they do not want such a change, we shall keep the existing arrangements and would certainly agree to no change in them. If there were intervention in France, it should be at the cost of the French Government. I assure the House in no way will the Government support Community financing of an intervention policy on sheep-meat.
As regards lamb and hill livestock subsidies, there was an increase of 50p as a result of last winter. I promised a review. It has taken place. The Government will make an announcement on the result of it. The right hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He cannot say that he is sympathetic with the British hill farmer but wants lamb prices to the consumer to be kept down.
Mr. Peter Mills: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the stand that he

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takes on these matters. Does he agree that as this is a national problem in France, with social implications, the French should pay the premium or the deficiency payments? Why should the Community as a whole have to pay for this? Surely national problems should be dealt with by the national Exchequer.
Mr. Walker: I agree with my hon. Friend. When the Community changes a regime, it makes transitional arrangements for those affected. The Government make the clear point that the French and Irish prices of sheepmeat are totally related to the illegal actions of the French Government over the past two years.
Mr. Donald Stewart: Is the Minister aware that his statement that no decision had been made on sheepmeat means that the French are winning, as they will shortly concede the matter when the issue is finished for this year? What action does he intend to take on that? Secondly, will he repeat his assurance that the fishing issue will be kept separate and not mixed up in a future package deal?
Mr. Walker: On the first point, the contrary is true. The French Government have been demanding an immediate Community-financed sheepmeat regime. The French Government would be winning if we agreed to that. However, we have totally disagreed.
Mr. William Hamilton: As the United Kingdom is the most lucrative market for European food producers, does not that put us in an extremely strong negotiating position? Will the Minister seriously consider retaliatory action against the French, who are deliberately defying a European Court of Justice statement?
Mr. Walker: I understand the hon. Gentleman's suggestion—indeed, it has been suggested by many people—that we should immediately retaliate. I ask the House to judge by results. My judgment is that the French Government are now discovering that their actions are creating a considerable disadvantage to France in the Council of Ministers. There is a range of matters of immense importance to France. I judge that soon the French Government will sensibly decide to comply with the law. If in the interim period we had decided to disregard the law in exactly the same way, and other Com
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munity countries had done the same, we could have discovered a range of factors adversely affecting all European countries. I much prefer to lead the pressure on the French during this period as I believe that it will be successful.
Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Is it seemly for my right hon. Friend to sit down with the French, while they are in contempt of court, and discuss new rules until such time as they have shown their willingness to obey the present rules? What is the point of discussing new regimes and new rules which can be broken in just the same way as the French are breaking the present ones?
Mr. Walker: That point is perfectly valid. It was made clear by the other members of the Council of Ministers and myself. This is how we proceeded tactically. We said that we should have every right to show total contempt of the discussions and to retaliate in a similarly illegal way but pointed out that if the French continued that would be the result for the whole of Europe. I believe that we shall succeed in making the French act legally without doing considerable damage to Europe as a whole.
Mr. Wm Ross: Is the Minister aware that there is not a common market for livestock products for the Nine—only for the Six? The French livestock authority, has the right to impose restrictions on imports from Denmark, the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom. Was that matter raised by the Minister at the recent meeting? Does he now intend to seek from the House powers to impose restrictions on imports into the United Kingdom to protect our farmers?
Mr. Walker: The French Government have not had such rights since 1 January 1978. That is why they are acting illegally. France decided to exercise the law correctly in relation to Ireland but to act illegally towards us. The European Court found against the French. They are now finding that their negotiating position and standing in Europe are fast deteriorating, to their national disadvantage, as a result of their attitude. That is why I believe that they will change their attitude.
Mr. Jay: Does the Minister's welcome assurance on New Zealand apply both to sheepmeat and dairy produce?
Mr. Walker: There are two different positions. The legal right of access of dairy products finishes at the end of 1980. Therefore, the New Zealand Government are currently renegotiating with the Commission a continuation of the voluntary arrangements that have existed up to now. They have a legal right under GATT, which preserves their position for all time.
Mr. David Price: Is my right hon. Friend aware that he has the support of the entire House in the attitude he takes on sheepmeat? Has he succeeded in persuading his fellow Ministers that we must insist on the importation of New Zealand sheepmeat as it is sold on the mass market, and that it is necessary to import it at one end of the year to balance our own production at the other?
Mr. Walker: The position was made clear. The New Zealand issue is said by one or two other member States to undermine immensely the agricultural market. It does not do that. It plays a traditional role in the British market. We intend to ensure that it continues in that role.
Mr. Dalyell: Is the Minister aware that the question of seal management is causing concern in Scotland and the North of England? Is it within the recollection of the Minister that Mr. Gundelach set up a study of the grey seal population in the North Sea? What has become of that study? What action is likely to be taken? Does he agree that the matter should be dealt with by all States riparian to the North Sea and not on a single State basis, as seals do not understand international frontiers?
Mr. Walker: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. He raised this topic with me previously, but I did not follow it up. I shall now do so. I shall contact Mr. Gundelach and then write to the hon. Gentleman.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I propose to call three speakers from either side and then the Minister.
Mr. Proctor: How far has my right hon. Friend gone with the fundamental reform of the common agricultural policy? If not very far, could he place the item on the agenda of the December Council of Ministers meeting?
Mr. Walker: My hon. Friend referred to the fundamental reform of the CAP. There has been a discussion on the overall financial problems of the CAP. In terms of the review of price fixing that will take place and the ceiling now being reached on budget expenditure, the Community will be required to decide where its priorities are and where it can make savings. We made clear that from this point onwards, if there is any increased expenditure under the CAP, similar savings must be found. That is bringing a fundamental, new approach to the CAP.
Mr. Hardy: I welcome the belated and mild recognition by the Government of the inadequacies of the European agricultural system and the fact that they have begun a modest effort to secure some improvement. Does the Minister consider that his efforts have been assisted or embarrassed by the line taken in Europe by some of the farmer Tory Members of the European Parliament?
Mr. Walker: All the farmer Tory Members are splendid. They make a good contribution.
Mr. Moate: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the determined stand he takes on the sheepmeat regime. I hope that he will continue that stance. Has he taken into account the complaints made about the French dumping their apples here at the height of our apple-growing season? Did he raise those allegations at the last meeting of the Council of Ministers? If not, will he do so soon?
Mr. Walker: I have looked at a number of examples of the very low prices notified to me for golden delicious apples in Britain. There is no evidence of dumping from the cases we have examined. If any merchant or producer has evidence of dumping, we will speedily examine it.
Dr. David Clark: Will the Minister comment on the contention, widely held in France, that after the end of this year our health regulations will not prevent the mass importation of French milk?
Mr. Walker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me the opportunity to make our position clear. In the only legal case concerning milk which has been taken up on health grounds, the Advocate General of the European Court,

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in his summing up, made a strong recommendation in favour of the British health regulations. Unfortunately, the judgment of the Court was made on another factor—the metric package—and it omitted any judgment on the health regulations. We believe that our regulations are justified and that the Advocate General was right in recommending in our favour. Therefore, we will keep our health regulations. On the evidence so far, we are confident that we shall win when this case is eventually decided by the European Court.
Mr. Hill: Is my right hon. Friend aware that hon. Members on both sides of the House appreciate his determined fight on the issue of lamb exports? He will appreciate that the French will win on this because it is a seasonal market. In his statement he made no mention of pigmeat. If my right hon. Friend listens very carefully, he will hear, throughout the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, the last dying gasps of the United Kingdom pig industry.
Mr. Walker: I am always sensitive to snorts from the Isle of Wight and Hampshire. As for a French victory, I hope that the French will quickly comply with the law. We will not simply have free access to that market then but we will have access free of all levies. Even at those seasonable times when the market has been open to British sheepmeat, our exports have been subject to very heavy levies indeed. In future there will be a considerable improvement.
I am glad to say that prices in the pigmeat industry have improved in the last few months. I hope that they will continue to do so, although I remain disturbed as MCAs are again created with the subsequent disadvantage to our pigmeat industry.
Mr. Foulkes: Will the right hon. Gentleman expand on the answer he gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) on the hill livestock compensatory allowances? Our hill farmers have experienced two very bad winters and are now getting less in cast ewes than they were getting four years ago. Will he also indicate whether in future the review will take place at a different time of the year, because now that the hill farmers have put their sheep
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to market it is far too late for them to be compensated fully for the expenses?
Mr. Walker: The hon. Gentleman should be aware that the last Labour Government were responsible for the timing of the review. As a result of that review, they decided to give a further 50p. We have paid that 50p in accordance with the previous Administration's assessment of the needs because it was not known what prices would be at the latter end of the year. At that time the forecasts were optimistic and I promised that we would review the position in relation to the prices reached at the end of this year. We have fulfilled that promise and I shall announce the result shortly.
Mr. Speaker: Was the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. Howells) present when I said that I would call those hon. Members who had been rising? No, I think not. However, in the mood of the House. I think I can call the hon. Member.
Mr. Geraint Howells: May I congratulate you, Mr. Speaker, and the Minister? I congratulate the Minister on his stand in Europe, but can he give us an assurance that he will not accept the intervention system now being proposed by the other European countries? In view of the present problem within the sheep industry, will he consider increasing the guarantee deficiency payment by 20p per kilo forthwith?
Mr. Walker: The answer to the latter question is "No". The answer to the first is that I stated at the Council of Ministers that under no circumstances would the British Government agree to an intervention system in sheepmeat. If, therefore, member countries persist in, and insist on, such a system, there will not be a sheepmeat regime.
Mr. Strang: Contrary to the impression given by the right hon. Gentleman in his reply to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), there is no conflict between the interests of lamb producers and those of the consumers. The present system of headage payments and deficiency payments provides a framework within which we have reasonable prices for consumers and adequate returns for producers. Will the right hon. Gentleman make sure that we retain the deficiency payment system and will he indicate when he intends to make his eagerly awaited

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statement on compensatory allowances? I think that he will accept, notwithstanding the 50p increase, that the plight of the industry is substantially worse than it was at this time last year.
Mr. Walker: I agree that the industry's position is worse. The previous Government's assessment was wrong and they were not generous enough. In my original statement I made it clear that we would review the matter at the beginning of November, that we would announce the results at the beginning of December and that the payment would be made in January. I hope to make the announcement before the beginning of December. That means that we will comply completely with the review I promised earlier in the year.
In relation to the consumer price and the effect on the sheep market, I hope that members of the Labour Party will make it clear whether they are opposed to or in favour of our producers having free access to Europe. If they are suggesting that free access of British food products to the European market should be stopped in the hope that the surpluses and the difficulty of getting rid of them would force down prices, I hope that they appreciate that that would be of very short-term advantage to the consumers. Such a scheme would destroy the producers, and that is of no use to consumers.
Mr. Speaker: Before I call the right hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) to make his application under Standing Order No. 9, I should tell the House that I have also received notice of an application from the hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Thorne). Since it is the same request, I give precedence to the right hon. Gentleman, who made it first.

IMMIGRATION RULES
Mr. Kaufman: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"The change in the immigration rules carried out without parliamentary authority whereby applications will, under the White
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Paper presented today, no longer be acceptable from today, even though made legally under the present immigration rules."
The Home Secretary failed to reply with clarity to a question I put to him concerning paragraph 13 of the White Paper published today on proposals for revision of the immigration rules. With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will read the relevant sentence from the handouts:
"The new Rules would apply to all applications on which a decision is taken on or after the date on which the new Rules are laid but the Government will be prepared to consider on the basis of the present Rules all applications made before the date of publication of this White Paper".
As I understand it, in so far as there is any clarity in that sentence, what it means is that the changes in the rules affecting aged parents, children, male fiances, husbands and a number of others that are proposed in this White Paper will come into force legally only when the rules are tabled and approved by this House. The Home Secretary made it clear in his statement that that will not be for some time. First, we are to have a debate on the White Paper, and only after that debate will the rules be laid for approval. However, even though the change will be legal only from the date of the approval of the rules by this House, the White Paper tells us that the Government will be prepared to consider, on the basis of the present rules—that is, those which have legal force until the new rules are approved by the House—all applications made before the date of publication of this White Paper.
What that means is that, following the publication of the White Paper at 11 o'clock today, applications can be legally made under the present rules and should be treated in good faith as applications made under the present law. Yet the White Paper ultra vires states that none of these applications will be acceptable. The law is being changed by a parliamentary statement. The rights of many thousands of people are affected simply as a result of a statement by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons. That is not acceptable in terms of the authority of the House and the rule of law.
The matter is specific because the Home Secretary has published a White Paper, made a statement about it and failed in answer to questions to clarify

1359
the position. The White Paper must therefore stand as tabled.
The matter is important because it affects thousands of human beings. It affects people who, until the rules are changed, will have a legal right to make applications but whose applications will be a farce because the White Paper states that they will not be treated as they should he treated under the law.
The matter is urgent because the change, unless the House is allowed to debate it, has been made since 11 o'clock today when the White Paper was published. Even the Home Secretary's promise that there will be a debate on the issue, which could be in a few days' time, will not set right a situation which exists ultra vires outside the law from this morning.
I submit that my application qualifies as an urgent matter under the Standing Order. We cannot wait for a debate even if it is announced in the Business Statement tomorrow. Immigration officers at our posts, in the sub-continent in particular, will have to operate on the basis of messages sent out to them from the Home Office and advance copies of the White Paper. They will deal with applications not on the basis of the law as it stands but on the basis of an illegal message sent to them by the Home Secretary.
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I submit that this matter is specific, urgent and important. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to give it precedence.
Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the change in the immigration rules carried out without parliamentary authority whereby applications will, under the White Paper presented today, no longer be acceptable from today, even though made legally under the present immigration rules."
I listened with care to the exchange earlier today. I listened with equal care to what the right hon. Gentleman said. As the House knows, I do not decide whether this subject should be debated. It has been announced that the House will debate it. All that my discretion allows is to decide whether it should be debated tonight or tomorrow.
The House has instructed me to give no reasons for my decision when such applications are made. I have given careful consideration to the representation, but I have to rule that the right hon. Gentleman's submission does not fall within the provisions of the Standing Order and, therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.

POLICE AUTHORITIES (POWERS)
4.54 pm
Mr. Jack Straw: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Police Act 1964 and certain other enactments to establish and extend the powers and duties of police authorities in respect of the operations and organisation of police forces.
The last major examination of the accountability of the police was by the Royal Commission on the Police which reported in 1962. The Royal Commission discussed at length the relationship between the police and the public. It noted that a chief constable
"is accountable to no one, and subject to no one's orders, for the way in which for example, he settles his general policies in regard to law enforcement and the concentration of resources on any particular type of crime or area…
The question therefore arises whether the status of chief constable should continue in future to shield him from external control in the formulation and application of … police policies … Behind this too lies the broader question whether the community should have some voice through their elected representatives … in the maintenance of law and order."
The Royal Commission's conclusion was clear. It stated:
"It appears to us … that the chief constable should therefore, be subject to more effective supervision than the present arrangements apear to recognise."
The Royal Commission led to the Police Act 1964. The then Home Secretary, the right hon. Henry Brooke, on Second Reading echoed the Royal Commission's views when he said:
"The Royal Commission thought … that chief constables are not at present adequately accountable. I agree."
Earlier he said:
"One of the lessons of modern times is that a police system, instituted to defend freedom and maintain law and order, must itself be under effective control."—[Official Report, 26 November 1963, Vol. 685, c. 83–4.]
Unfortunately, as the local authorities and some hon. Members said at the time, these good intentions were translated neither into the small print of the Police Act nor into the general philosophy of the Home Office on the accountability of the police. Since the 1964 Act the accountability of the police, far from being increased, has been weakened.
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There are other reasons for this lack of accountability than the inadequacy of the Act. First, the size of police forces has increased. In 1962 there were 123 police forces in England and Wales outside the Metropolitan area. Some of those forces covered populations as small as 60,000. Today there are only 41 police forces, each with an average population of 1 million and none with fewer than 400,000. Whatever the other arguments in favour of larger police forces—and I accept that there are some—their size alone tends to distance the police, particularly senior officers, from the public.
It is no coincidence that the loss of accountability and the feeling of greater distance between the senior officers and the public is most apparent in some of the large cities and towns. Manchester. Liverpool and Sheffield are examples. Before 1964 those cities and my constituency, Blackburn, had their own police forces. Each of them was controlled by a watch committee consisting entirely of elected members. Those committees had the power of promotion and dismissal over all the officers down to sergeant and constable. Today those cities are policed by much larger forces which are more remote. They are responsible to police authorities, only two-thirds of whose members are councillors. They have few effective powers.
A second reason for the loss of accountability and for the greater distance between the police and the public is that, as forces have become larger, a new breed of chief constable has developed. They are more assertive of their independence. The Association of Chief Police Officers has, according to The Guardian, adopted a
"deliberate policy to come out into the open more … attempting to influence public opinion and the courts via the media."
Some of the chief constables have not confined themselves to policing policies but have beer, willing to engage in explicit political controversy. The best publicised example of this new breed, although by no means the only one, is the chief constable of Greater Manchester, Mr. James Anderton. Not only has he sought to have the law changed on many questions, but on television recently, when discussing the sex discrimination laws, he pronounced that he

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might openly defy the law of the land. That is hardly the example which a chief constable should set.
There are other examples of the new assertiveness of police constables. It has led, and will lead, to increasingly strained relations between police authorities and their chiefs, as it did in South Yorkshire in 1977 and has today on Merseyside. The chief constable of Merseyside, Mr. Oxford, is reported to have told his police authority to keep out of his force's business. The authority has had to set up an inquiry into its powers.
The Police Act has not worked as intended. Today, 15 years after its enactment, it is time to translate the good intentions behind the Act into good practice.
My Bill seeks to make five improvements. First, it seeks to give police authorities the right to decide, subject to two important safeguards, general policing policies for their areas. I believe strongly that elected representatives have the right to a say on the general policing methods adopted in an area, whether they involve policemen on the beat or in panda cars or whether the new vogue of community policing is to be adopted.
I firmly believe, and share the view expressed by the Royal Commission, that chief constables must have independence in the deployment of police in particular cases and public order situations and over the prosecution of cases. There would be two important safeguards to chief constables—first, to delay a police authority decision for a period, and, secondly, to have the right to refer it to the Home Office for a decision where a chief constable thought that it had infringed upon his area of discretion. In that respect, that mechanism is similar to the present mechanism under section 12 of the Police Act 1964.
Secondly, the Bill would give authorities more power to obtain information from chief constables. Their present powers are woefully inadequate. That power would be subject to important safeguards in relation to personal, operational, and security information, and information that would be of use to criminals.
Thirdly, the police authority would have the power of appointment, promotion and dismissal extended downwards
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to chief superintendents and superintendents. Technically, the authorities already appoint chief officers. It would extend downwards because in today's large forces the superintendents and chief superintendents are in many respects fulfilling the roles formerly fulfilled by chief constables of the smaller forces.
Fourthly, the police authority's powers to supervise the complaints procedure would be strengthened and duties in respect of complaints against senior officers—which is a subject close to our hearts in Lancashire—would be more clearly specified.
Fifthly, there would be closer consultation and co-operation between Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Police and the police authority over the reports that are conducted each year on the police forces.
To those who say that police matters should be kept out of politics, I would say this. The Bill preserves the independence of chief constables over certain cases, but matters of general policing policy have always been, and always will be, a subject of legitimate political concern. In so far as the interest of politicians in general policing policy has been heightened, some chief constables have only themselves to blame. To adapt the late President Truman's injunction to politicians, having got into the political kitchen, chief constables should not now complain about feeling the heat.
It must be accepted also that the politicisation of chief constables is in part inherent in the present system. In some respects chief constables have been forced into politics by their lack of accountability for their decisions. They have become the final arbiters of many crucial policy matters and have been forced to adopt an overtly political role to defend these decisions.
The success of the police depends ultimately not on the number of vehicles, firearms, riot shields or computer terminals available but upon the confidence of the public. I share the view of the chief constable of Devon and Cornwall. Mr. John Alderson, who earlier this year wrote in The Daily Telegraph:
"It is of crucial importance that this debate"
—that is, about the police in a free society—
"leads to sensible social action if rocketing democracy is not to leave behind an authoritarian police system designed for 19th century

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England… The police have to learn to consult the neighbourhood people about their concerns, their wishes and their co-operation".
My Bill aims to provide a new framework in which that co-operation can be achieved.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Jack Straw, Mr. Stan Thorne, Mr. Allan Roberts, Dr. Oonagh McDonald, Mr. Ron Leighton and Mr. Michael Meacher.

POLICE AUTHORITIES (POWERS)
  POLICE AUTHORITIES (POWERS)
  Mr. Jack Straw accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Police Act 1964 and certain other enactments to establish and extend the powers and duties of police authorities in respect of the operations and organisation of police forces: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 7 December and to be printed. [Bill 78.]

  EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (GREEKACCESSION) BILL
  Considered in Committee.
  [Mr. BERNARD WEATHERILL in the Chair]

  EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (GREEKACCESSION) BILL
    Clause 1

      EXTENDED MEANING OF "THE TREATIES" AND "THE COMMUNITY TREATIES"
      5.6 pm
      Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
      Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: I assume that I may address myself, Mr. Weatherill, to the amendment that stands in my name and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends.
      The Chairman: The amendment is not selected. The hon. Lady may draw attention to it while debating "clause 1 stand part", but not address herself to it.
      Mrs. Dunwoody: I am grateful for that helpful remark, Mr. Weatherill. One of the joys of parliamentary life is that one is eternally having these little disappointments.
      It is an important Bill and the Government have drawn it extremely narrowly. I must ask you, Mr. Weatherill, to consider some of the implications. One of the difficulties that we have encountered in the House of Commons since we entered the Community is that there does not seem to be an efficient way of informing ourselves about the details of the many negotiations that take place in Brussels.
      The most important plank of Community policy is agriculture. With its subsidiary budget, it takes about 80 per cent. of the money available. The enlargement of the Community by three new largely agriculture-based economies must have a direct effect upon the budget. Since we entered the Community it has become the custom, a good one, for Ministers to come to the House of Commons to report on the negotiations that have taken place in the Council of Ministers, and in many instances directly with the Commission. However, even Conservative hon. Members would not suggest that the machinery is in any way efficient. On many occasions I have taken

      1367
      part in debates, with not only the present Government but previous Governments, about important subjects that were to be decided finally in the Council of Ministers. Governments take note of the opinion of the House of Commons but often take decisions in Brussels without reporting back on subsequent developments.
      The amendment, which unfortunately has has not been selected, was aimed at giving the Government the opportunity to come to the House of Commons annually to report on not only the existing budget of the Community but, for example, on the effect of the accession of Greece. It would give them the specific chance to explain in detail what is happening. We are at a stage in the Community's development which some of us believe to be crucial. Will it continue to rush at great speed to the hour when all of the money runs out, or will it begin to discuss in a sensible manner how it may be funded in future? If it is, the accession of the new States must be a great element in the decisions that are taken about future financing.
      The Government have been astonishingly modest in the amount of information that they have given the House of Commons about the effect of Greek accession. We have made it plain that we welcome countries such as Greece into the Community. We believe that it is essential for the maintenance of democracy in the battered State of Greece that it be allowed to accede if that is what the Greek people require. However, it is obvious from the papers that have been produced by the Commission that the effect on the budget will be considerable.
      It appears from the Commission papers that it is suggested that Greece should have a long period of accession, and that during that period it should be guaranteed a certain amount of financial support. It is obvious that Greece will expect from the guarantee funds, for example, considerable transfers of moneys. It will require assistance with its infrastructure. It will certainly require assistance with irrigation. If it is to modernise its existing farm system, it will expect the same sort of support as farmers in the north have been receiving from the Community.
      There has been no indication from the Government that they are even prepared to debate in the Chamber the effect that
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      Greek accession will have on the Community budget and the moneys that will be available for Greece. There is no existing machinery for the transfer of large sums from the so-called richer nations to the poorer nations in the Community. It may be said that the regional fund and the social fund should be used to change any imbalance, but those of us who have spent some years sitting in the European Parliament have learnt to our considerable distress that the machinery for transferring such sums is unwieldy and slow-moving. It has only small sums at its disposal.
      The Chairman: Order. I hope that I have not misled the hon. Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody). The Committee is debating "clause 1 stand part". I have not selected amendment No. 1. The hon. Lady's remarks seem to relate rather more to new clause 1, which I have selected. That clause will be taken after we have disposed of the motions that clauses 1 and 2 stand part of the Bill.
      Mrs. Dunwoody: I stand corrected, Mr. Weatherill. I shall try to be a better girl in future.
      Greek accession must automatically change the entire composition of the Community. The changes that it brings about must perforce affect Great Britain. If I may, I shall address myself to those changes.
      The agriculture budget will inevitably be increased. Are we to see in Dublin the Prime Minister's boasts that she is demanding a broad balance carried out, or are we to have a climb-down and discover that the budget will become larger and that Britain's contribution will remain disproportionately large? If that is so, I think that the Minister has a great deal of explaining to do in Committee.
      When Greece becomes a member of the Community, it will have a number of changes to make. Are we to see changes that will enable the system of State aids to continue? At present, Greece supports many of its most sensitive State industries. It supports shipbuilding. That is not a State industry, but it receives assistance. The Greek Government also support the textile industry. The British Government have been silent on the implications for British textile workers following Greek accession. These are sensitive subjects.

      1369
      There are not many trade barriers between Britain and Greece, but are the Government convinced that the long-term and even the short-term safeguards for our workers in the textile industry are sufficient to protect them in future? We seek the Government's view on these issues. There has been little indication of what will happen.
      5.15 pm
      Under the Treaty the effect of Greek accession must inevitably change the institutions of the Community. That will be tremendously important. What is to happen about languages? There has been a clear indication over a number of years that the cacophony of sounds created by instant translation makes life in the Community virtually impossible for those who are trying to communicate. Following Greek accession, it seems that we shall have even more interpreters and translators.
      The institutions of the Community are already hardly the epitome of rapid decision-making processes. However, they are to bear an extra burden. Will there be a change in the number of Commissioners? If Britain reduces the number of Commissioners that it sends to Brussels, how is that to be arranged and what will be the effect on the machinery of the Commission? All these issues have been ignored by the Minister.
      The Government have not told us what they imagine will come about as a result of the accession of Greece. I am disturbed that there has been no reiteration of the implications of the Copenhagen declaration. We are part of a multination Community. If by some dreadful mischance one member of the Community should cease to support a democratic system and should cease to take care of the human rights of the people inside that country, surely the declaration will apply. Surely it will apply to both old and new members of the Community. The Opposition would like to see it stressed by the House of Commons and by Her Majesty's Government that it is vital that new and old members maintain, adhere to, and understand the need for, human rights for all citizens of the Community.
      There have been a number of Amnesty reports about the situation inside Greece. The reports have given rise to fears about
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      some past practices in Greece. We all pray that they have now totally disappeared. However, I have received a number of letters from Greek citizens about human rights in Greece. These letters ask Her Majesty's Government to ensure that the subject is not lost sight of in the negotiations that must take place to allow Greece to enter the Community
      I give the Government a small but important example. Jehovah's Witnesses in Greece, as the Minister undoubtedly knows, are suffering considerably because they are not prepared to join the Armed Forces. In many instances, they are given extremely long prison sentences. When they leave prison, they are offered their call-up papers at the prison gates. When they refuse to accept them, the process starts all over again. It is important in the countries of the Community that religious freedom and political freedom should remain a part of our heritage. Britain has a special responsibility to draw the attention of all member States, and all new member States, to the essential aspect that those freedoms must play in a democratic organisation.
      In terms of the entire agriculture industry, Greece is a tiny country. Many of its farms are small. A disproportionate number of Greeks are involved in agriculture. It produces products that are already sensitive in the Community. It is obvious that those products will add to the surpluses. I am not sure that even the Greeks have understood the extent to which their accession will affect their balance of payments problems. Greece, like Britain, imports certain basic commodities that are part of the common agricultural policy. Greece exports commodities as to which it will not necessarily benefit from the common agricultural policy.
      Greece may find the need to renegotiate some points of agricultural policy after entry into the Community. Our long experience shows the inefficacy of such a move. I hope that these matters will be borne in mind in discussions about the agricultural budget and all aspects of the payments. At present the figures in the budget show that the split between north and south in the Community is a real one. In the north, there is support for farmers producing milk, cereals and products of a temperate

      1371
      zone. Although a Mediterranean plan has been started by the Community, the assistance going to sensitive products like wine, olive oil, fruit and early vegetables is minimal in comparison with the amount spent on milk. This inevitably means a long transition period for Greece in those products of her own that are extremely sensitive. It will be a seven-year period, we are told, for commodities such as peaches.
      At the same time, Greece will have to accept Community laws in matters such as free movement of capital. This means that multinational companies will be able to go into Greece, set up industrial units and benefit from what they see as a low wage economy and move their capital freely backwards and forwards. The political implications of such arrangements for Greece may be considerable.
      The extension of the Community should be welcomed, not least for the fact that it provides an opportunity to examine the existing machinery to see where it has been going wrong and how it needs to be changed. Her Majesty's Opposition have never made any secret of the fact that they regard the existing European agricultural policy as totally inequitable and unacceptable. There have been a great many emotive statements since this Government took office which directly contradict the view they took before the election. Any criticism of the Community's agricultural policy by the previous Labour Government was treated by Conservative Members as proof of the fact that we were bad Europeans. It is interesting that the Conservative Government have changed their view so radically in such a short time. But we welcome their conversion.
      We believe that the agricultural policy and the Community budget are the most sensitive and important matters to be decided. Finn Gundelach made clear over 18 months ago that this monster was eating up the substance of the Community and the substance of the agricultural budget, leaving nothing for those aspects of Community policy that many would like to have seen developed.
      What will be the effect of the accession of a new nation? Will there be a new transitional fund? Will there be a new mechanism for moving moneys from the Community into those areas most desperately
      1372
      in need? If so, what will be the cost? Whatever the future of the Community, and however great the pressures put on the new member States, a stable EEC can be maintained only if there is a degree of fairness between one country and another. That fairness must not exist simply between north and south. It must exist between those who are rich and those who are less rich. Until that balance is achieved, the Conservative Government will be failing in their duty if they do not spell out the implications of the changes that are to take place.
      Mr. Tam Dalyell: The size of attendance in the Committee fails to reflect the importance of this matter. I would like to associate myself with many of the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody), although we took a different view on the accession of Britain to the Community. I am glad that the circumstances allow us to talk, not stridently and not vituperatively, but quietly and seriously, to Foreign Office Ministers.
      I wonder whether the Community has fully tumbled to what it is trying to chew off, if that is the right expression, in terms of enlargement. At this time last year I attended a lecture by Guido Brunner, the Energy Commissioner, at Heriot-Watt university, just outside my constituency. Talking about the enlargement of the Community to include Greece, Portugal and Spain, he said:
      "To me this is an exciting challenge. We owe a duty to the new democracies of southern Europe. There will, of course, be problems. The British are already uneasy about the CAP. I cannot say that its workings will be made easier by the addition of large quantities of Mediterranean produce. There is also the problem of regional imbalances."
      This was a speech by a very intelligent and concerned Commissioner. He went on:
      "We have to admit that in the 20 years of the existence of the Community, it has made little progress in ironing out regional disparities in terms of employment, productivity and incomes. The man in Hamburg still earns six times more than the man in Palermo and this gap may get worse with enlargement. Just to quote a few figures; income per head in Portugal is only 32 per cent. of the Community average; in Greece, it is 44 per cent.; and in Spain, 54 per cent."
      This is the rub. Commissioner Brunner went on:
      "Enlargement will increase the Community's GNP by 10 per cent., but the population will

      1373
      grow by 20 per cent., and there will be 50 per cent. more farmers."
      Something has to give. I do not object to the endless statements from the Minister of Agriculture and other Ministers—it is proper that they should come to the House to make them—but I wonder how many people, in the build-up to the Dublin summit, have tumbled to the fact that far from solving the CAP problems the number of farmers will be increased by 50 per cent. One cannot, of course, contest the entry of embryo democracies such as Portugal and Spain. I agree with Commissioner Brunner that he was not quoting these figures as an argument against enlargement. He said:
      "I give them to reveal the magnitude of the task before us. We must not ignore them, otherwise our efforts may be inadequate. It is a daunting challenge. We must prove equal to it."
      I realise that there is no easy answer to a question that I would have put to my own Government I do not pose it, therefore, in any vituperative way. One is, however, entitled to ask Foreign Office Ministers about their thinking on the matter. Do we really understand precisely what we are letting ourselves in for? It may be said that we have to face the fact that income distribution will be no different. If that is the case, the Greek and Portuguese farmers and the Spanish peasants had better be told. That is not their understanding of the position.
      I speak with some knowledge, having been a member of the European Parliament Greek Committee that went twice to Greece and held many meetings in Luxembourg and elsewhere. I am not making these remarks off the top of my head. It is an extremely difficult subject. It is not a subject on which I would want to try to score cheap points off any Government.
      My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe referred to the question of language, a matter of medium importance, which I raised in the previous debate on 30 October. I hope to be forgiven if I quote the letter that I received from the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 5 November, which referred to my contribution on 30 October. The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) said:
      1374
      "The new Member States will expect to have their languages added to the list of official languages of the Community. (As you know there are six at present: French, German, Italian, Dutch, Danish and English.) It is right that Ministers and other represenatives of each State should be able to speak in their native language when they wish to; and authentic texts of Community documents must, for purposes of legal implementation, exist in the administrative language of each Member State."
      One can hardly gainsay that.
      5.30 pm
      The hon. Member went on:
      "Within the limits imposed by these principles, we would be happy to see a rationalisation of the use of languages at working level. A good deal of the work of the Community is already carried out in a limited number of languages common to the participants in a particular meeting, without being rendered into all six. This is a question which the Report of the Three Wise Men"—
      that is the former right hon. Member for Birkenhead, Mr. Edmund Dell, and his colleagues—
      "on the machinery and procedures of the institutions is expected to touch on."
      Can we have any interim guidelines from Mr. Dell and his colleagues? If so, can the Minister of State say anything about it? How are they expected to solve the problem? Unless one is firm on the question of language, the machinery that has built up becomes impossible. It is very easy to talk about how many translators there will be from Danish into Portuguese and from Greek into Danish. One could go on like that. Nevertheless, as those of us who have had the privilege of being Members of the European Assembly or Parliament, according to taste, for four years know, this is a factory for documentation. To put it mildly, the Commission is no better now.
      Unless the amount of documentation is cut down, it rises at an exponential rate. There must be some understanding at an early stage of what should be done. I do not make too much of the Cyrillic alphabet, but during the discussions the Greeks said "So many of us understand English and French so well that it is really no problem" Did they mean that? Every Minister has a right to insist on speaking in his own language. On the other hand, there are many peripheral documents, and one must ask what we intend to do about this. If everyone insists on his rights, the whole thing will

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      become hopelessly and completely unwieldy.
      That is a minor matter. I asked another question during the previous debate, and I repeat it because it was not answered. What will be the institutional effect of entry? One can understand that the Commission and Commissioner setups worked quite well when there were six nations. It became more difficult when there were nine. But just spatchcocking in three extra Commissioners because there are more States does not seem to me to be a sensible way of trying to build an efficient organisation. It might be better to go back to the drawing board.
      For example, when people design aircraft they do not exactly add extra weight to an existing machine in order to make it bigger. Equally, it may not be all right to try to build on to the existing administrative machine. [Interruption.] There is no point in asking questions of the Minister when he is engaging in a conversation with one of his hon. Friends. There is no point in trying to build on to the existing administrative machine something that may have been suitable on previous occasions. However, now that circumstances are qualitatively different it simply will not work.
      If and when there is a Turkish application, which is not quite so fantastic as it might have seemed even a year ago, what happens then? We can hardly deny the Turks. The truth about the Turks is that they think that they have the worst of all possible worlds in their present association agreement. They want either full membership or Third world status. It is one or the other. They do not want to go on as they are doing at the present time. This has been made clear by the Turkish delegation that came to Luxembourg last year. A problem will arise in that respect. I am asking for the thoughts of the Minister of State on the way in which the Commission and, indeed, the Council of Ministers should operate, given the new circumstances.
      I should like to refer briefly to the question of the European Parliament. It is an absurdity that this should be a peripatetic Parliament. I read in the press this morning that there was a debate in Strasbourg yester
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      day to which Mrs. Clwyd and others contributed. Everyone seems to be passing the buck. The Commission says that it cannot comment on the costs of other institutions travelling around like a circus and being peripatetic. The Council of Ministers seems to indicate that it is not exactly its busines to do so. Therefore, I suppose that it comes back to the national Parliaments.
      Those of us who had the experience of four years in the European Assembly, whatever our views on membership, are all united in the view that this is an expensive and inefficient way of operating. It drains not only Members but officials, who have to spend much of their time deciding who wants such-and-such a document for a particular committee. This is not a serious way of going about things. I do not think that even anti-Marketeers would wish to bring the Community into disrepute by having a peripatetic parliament or circus.
      The entry of new partners gives us an opportunity to rethink the important question of the siting of the institutions, which is far more than a logistic issue. This is related to another matter of efficiency that I also raised last time but which was not commented upon. That is the whole question of the revolving presidency. I can imagine that there will soon be another British presidency. As I understand it, that president will probably work extremely hard and will spend about four months preparing for the presidency. He will work in that capacity for about three months, and the following three months will be spent on the hand-over. That is no way to do a job. It is no way to set about matters at all.
      It is not only a question of Ministers changing. As we all know, in a democracy Ministers change as a result of elections or Cabinet shuffles. However, the more serious issue relates to the Civil Service. To have civil servants spending a lot of time preparing for something and spending the last two or three months preparing to hand over to someone else is a lunatic way of operating a serious institution. It is all the more lunatic when the Six expand to the Twelve and even the Thirteen.
      I want to raise two technical points relating to the Select Committee on European legislation. First, I asked a question of the staff of that Committee about

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      the complicated issue of the road haulage quota arrangements. Mr. Frank Clark tells me:
      "So far as I can find out this has not yet been considered in any detail. It seems likely that what will in fact happen will be that the total quota will be increased to accommodate Greece in the same way as when the UK joined the Community but this has still to be negotiated."
      These road haulage quota arrangements have given enough trouble at this end of the Community. Heaven knows what kind of trouble will arise at the other end, because the Greeks seem to operate a very different system. When one actually tackles them about this, there is complete vagueness. When the Greek Government discover that they will have to accede to this kind of regulation, they may have many of the troubles that we have had here.
      Let us look, for instance, at the road haulage regulations. I do not know whether there is anyone on the Front Bench who has knowledge of this subject, but if not I would be willing to accept a letter. When I am told that all these matters are still to be negotiated, it seems to me that there are many vital matters that have been left rather vague. I put it in a general sense: are there many outstanding matters that are still vague?
      Finally, I asked whether the instrument regarding Commission participation in the United Nations Organisation discussions would be relevant, and Mr. P. D. Brittain, of the staff, went into it on my behalf. He wrote to me:
      "In my view, the immediate question whether a Commission competence in a limited field (the Intergovernmental Working Party of Experts in International Standards of Accounting and Reporting) would have a very narrow application to the Greek situation. In the long term, Greece will inherit the Community legislation on Company Law that could be affected by the Commission proposal.
      In the meantime, she is, presumably, free to be a candidate in her own right for membership of the Working Group concerned."
      On the whole question of company law I ask again, do the Greek companies, not least the Greek shipping companies, really understand and comprehend precisely what they are letting themselves in for? If the Minister tells me that all this has been gone into in great detail in the negotiations, that all the spadework has been
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      done by Mr. Natali and his colleagues, I will accept it. But I think it is worth asking from the Opposition Benches how much outstanding business remains in these negotiations.
      Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies. I gather that the Opposition Front Bench will not be voting on this clause. Though the Opposition may reasonably wish to express criticism of the EEC, as the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) has done, and invite explanations and point out various difficulties that will arise, I profoundly hope that, having reflected on the matters, they will not press to a vote the new clause to be debated later or vote against clause 1.
      I say that because this country is the first to pass legislation to approve the accession of Greece as a new member of the Community. I know full well that His Excellency the Greek Ambassador and Greek Ministers and Members of Parliament recognise that what we are discussing is not intended to be an insult to or an attack upon Greece. It may well be argued that the Greeks are—as, indeed, they are—a highly sophisticated nation with an undoubtedly deep understanding of politics. But in the light of yesterday's debate, which happily ended with the result that the Greek external services of the BBC will continue, the words that we express tonight will be of much greater interest in Greece than they will be here. Every word that we say on this matter tonight will reach the Greeks.
      The message that I want to go out from the House of Commons—it undoubtedly goes out from the whole Conservative Party and the Government—is that we are the first country to seek to secure that the accession of Greece meets with the approbation of the British people. I should like to be able to say that for Britain as a whole.
      I know there are many on the Opposition Back Benches who share the view that I have expressed—some have served with me in the British-Greek parliamentary group. Many of them have been to Greece and recognise the immeasurably improved diplomatic and economic relations that have developed in recent years between Britain and Greece since Mr. Karamanlis again became Prime Minister. At that time, relations between the two countries were absolutely appalling.

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      It was at the height of our difficulties with Cyprus.
      5.45 pm
      At that time, there was intense criticism of the approach of the then Labour Government and their policies in relation to Greece and Turkey. All that was overhauled. As a result of the different approach of the leaders of the Labour Party in recent years, we achieved a united approach in our attitude to Greece, both in terms of trade and in diplomacy generally. As a consequence, relations have much improved.
      If this matter is carried to a Division and the Labour Opposition vote against the Bill, their action is bound to be misunderstood by the people of Greece. I ask the Labour Party not to do that. I know that there are many on the Opposition Benches who say that there should not be a vote tonight on anything that could in any way reflect upon the accession of Greece.
      It is true that there is a general view among many hon. Members of the House, and among many people in the country, that there should not be the burden of additional expenditure for the EEC. An amendment was tabled that has not been called. I would have argued that that amendment was out of order anyway, but it sought to argue that there should be no increase in the total budget of the Community as a result of the accession of the Hellenic Republic. Whether the amendment is out of order or not, it is a fact of life that we, as Members of the House, cannot possibly control the budget of the EEC or influence whether that budget may, for a variety of reasons, be increased.
      One thing that is fairly obvious is that if one, two, or, possibly, three other nations join the EEC it is inevitable that the budget must increase to take account of the advantages that those countries may or may not enjoy.
      The Chairman: Order. In view of what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said, I hope that he will not address himself to an amendment that he thinks is out of order and that I have not selected.
      Mr. Rees-Davies: As I pointed out, Mr. Weatherill, it is both out of order and has not been selected. What I am
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      pointing out is that the raison d'être for the present debate is that there are those who do not share my approach, which is pro-Community, and who spend all their time at present attacking the EEC budget on ally pretext. One of the ways to attack the budget is to say that the accession of a new nation to the Community means an inevitable increase in the budget. I was venturing to point out that that is one of the arguments that led to an unselected amendment to which I made reference only en passant.
      The reality of the situation is that Greece must understand that there are those who are opposed to the entry of Greece into the EEC. Indeed, Mr. Papandreou is opposed to it. For that reason I am speaking for the benefit of the people of Greece as opposed to those in Great Britain. There are those who are still bitterly opposed to Great Britain's remaining one of the EEC partners. All those people are entitled to criticise and to say "Well, we are paying far too much money to the EEC." Our own Prime Minister has made it plain that that is the view that the Government take, as, indeed, do many Members throughout the House.
      That having been said, I do not think that it is either appropriate or fair to try to build on the suggestion that Greece, therefore, should not become a member because that might increase the overall cost.
      We should seek to give the maximum possible support to this measure. We should strongly urge those in the Labour Party who do not wish in any way to reduce the opportunities of Greece to join in as one of our partners to give this measure their welcome and to make plain, in anything that they say from now on, that it is not intended to reflect upon Greek entry. We should also make it abundantly clear that the House of Commons has no intention whatever of voting against the Third Reading or expressing a view on something to which neither the Left nor the Right of the Labour Party, nor the whole of the Conservative Benches, has hitherto been opposed. I hope that the measure will pass with our warmest support to our friends and colleagues.
      Mr. Donald Anderson: I fully support the substance of

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      the views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) that the accession of Greece and the two Iberian countries to the Community will have the most significant effects for us in Britain and for the Community. However, I follow what the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) said—that it would be quite wrong if any decision were to be made here to vote against the accession for quite extraneous reasons. I am confident that there will be broad all-party support for the accession of Greece to the Community. Indeed, I could not support new clause 1 or new clause 2, for reasons that I shall outline, although basically I follow the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe.
      My guiding principle is that we either accept the fact of Greek accession or we do not. Whatever the arguments for and against that accession—they have been ventilated in previous debates in this Chamber—we have to come to terms with the fact that we are beyond the point of no return and that Greece will become a member of the Community. If we accept that, we must do so, and be seen to do so in Greece and elsewhere, wholeheartedly and without reserve, in no way giving the impression that Greece will be put under greater scrutiny than any existing member of the Community or that she might be regarded in any way as other than a full member of the Community.
      I say in passing that my view is that Britain as a whole has not taken on board the full implications of enlargement, including the accession of Greece, and much will be against our own economic interests. Indeed, it could plausibly be argued that the accession of Greece will have a destabilising effect on Greece itself, because of the considerable internal opposition to accession from PASOK, and it could have a destabilising effect on the eastern Mediterranean because of relationships with Turkey.
      As my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) said, the accession will probably have major effects which have not yet been fully thought through by this country or the Community on the machinery of the Community. I shall not detail the technical points that my hon. Friend made relating to language, interpretation and the Com
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      missioners. However, it will clearly be important also for the budget. We know that there will be a major crisis in the budget in the near future, in any event. If it is unlikely that, say, the proportion of the budget devoted to regional aids will be increased, that, on any basis of fairness, must mean that less cash will be available for disadvantaged areas in Britain when one compares their economic health with that of disadvantaged areas of Greece.
      My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian also set out the possibility, given this new opening to the south, of the development of olive oil lakes, as we have had with wine lakes, and the effects on United Kingdom industries such as shipbuilding and textiles. All those things, however important, are in this sense things of the past. They have been overridden because of the Government's view—and the Labour Party's view when in Opposition—that the accession of Greece must be accepted and welcomed for political reasons.
      We know that a different EEC will emerge from enlargement. The vision of the founding fathers of the EEC, Jean Monet and his colleagues, an ever-closer union of the European peoples, will become that much less attainable as a result of the accession of these countries, whose economies are less powerful than our own. They will add further destabilising factors to Community development. But that development in itself, the fact of cohesion being much less attainable, will be welcomed by many people in Britain as being the sort of view of the Community that they had in any event and that is being brought about now as a result of these developments.
      I return to the question whether we should have an audit of the effect on Britain of the accession of Greece, and no doubt similar demands in respect of Spain and Portugal. This would be to treat Greece differently. In any event, the information is available from Community sources. There is no case for treating Greece separately, as if it were an unwelcome addition to the Community. Greece will not be a second-class member; it will be a full member, as we are. To treat Greece in any other way would be seen symbolically by our friends in Greece as a most unfriendly act.

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      I certainly would not support either of the new clauses. I add my voice to those who, in spite of all the difficulties and the adverse economic consequences that we shall have to face, welcome Greece as a full member of the Community.
      Sir Bernard Braine: I endorse the views expressed so clearly by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) and the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson). I woud not wish to criticise those who have tabled the amendment. It is the business of Parliament to probe and to extract information from the Executive. Of course, we all know—
      The Chairman: Order. The amendment is not selected.
      Sir B. Braine: I was referring to the amendment in passing, Mr. Weatherill, but I take it that I am in order in addressing myself to the Question, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
      The Chairman: But not to the amendment. Perhaps the hon. Member was not present at the start of the debate. The debate is on the Question, That the clause stand part of the Bill. Amendment No. 1 was not selected.
      Sir B. Braine: But surely, Mr. Weatherill, it is in order for me to say, in regard to the shape of the debate as a whole—whether or not amendments have been selected—that I do not wish in any way to criticise any hon. Members for tabling amendments which seek to extract information from the Executive.
      I wanted to say that it would be extremely unfortunate if it were thought anywhere in Europe—and especially in Greece—that the debate reflects opposition to Greece's joining the Community. It would also be untrue.
      6 pm
      There are profound differences on some matters between the two sides of the Committee, but one of the happiest features recently in our relations with Greece has been the tremendous support given by hon. Members of all parties to the British-Greek group since the restoration of democracy in Greece. That group has endeavoured to establish close, cordial and developing relations between
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      the two Parliaments and peoples, and Labour Members as well as Conservative Members have been conspicuous in that work. In earlier times, Mr. Weatherill, you showed deep interest in our work and can testify to what I say. It was no surprise, therefore, that almost 200 hon. Members, drawn from all parties, signed the early-day motion warmly welcoming the decision of the Greek Parliament to apply for membership.
      I like to think that it is due to the efforts on both sides of the House of Commons that the Government have had second thoughts about cutting out the Greek language services of the BBC. In Greece there is immense interest in what is happening in this country and great warmth of feeling towards us. It would be a sad day if, as a result of the shape of this debate, the impression were given that there is any body of opinion in the British House of Commons hostile to Greek membership of the Community.
      I say at once that I have sympathy with the view that there should be an annual appraisal of the effects of the Community budget, but the hon. Member for Swansea, East put the matter in clear perspective. Why pick on Greece? There is a financial crisis in the European Community, but that is no argument against Greek accession. I venture to think that the sooner we can weld together the democratic countries of Western Europe in close unity of function and purpose, the sooner we shall have institutions that reflect the needs and aspirations of its democratic peoples. The fact that there is an immediate financial crisis has no bearing on Greek accession.
      I take the broader view. It was always sad that from the beginning our vision of Europe was limited. All the democratic countries of Western Europe should be together in the modern world, and I warmly welcome the Bill, which sets the seal of final approval by the British Parliament on Greek membership.
      I hope that no message will go out from the House of Commons by word or vote which suggests to people in Greece, who are anxiously watching what we may say and decide, that there is any feeling of reservation about Greek membership. I believe that I speak for the vast majority

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      of hon. Members in saying that, despite the budgetary difficulties which concern every member of the Community, the accession of Greece is a step forward. A Europe without Greece is unthinkable. We owe so much to the contribution of Greek culture to Western civilisation. I hope that the message will go out tonight that Parliament warmly welcomes the accession of Greece.
      Mr. Bob Cryer: I have strong reservations about the accession of Greece. However, the accession of Greece, Spain and Portugal will have the beneficial effect of bringing the Cornmunity to a point where it will virtually break up, so I shall not express my opposition.
      These glowing references to the Community are far from the truth. The economic ideal of the Community is free movement of labour and capital and not of working together, and that enables the evils of competition to decide which countries shall have which industry by driving the weaker ones out of existence.
      Greece has a large textile industry. We want to work with countries throughout the world, but, as we constantly emphasise, the world does not end at the boundaries of the Common Market. We should go outside. The Common Market is comprised of nine countries, and there are over 30 in Europe. We want to work with them all.
      I have reservations about clause 1 standing part of the Bill—and it forms the main part of it. I am particularly concerned about the effect of Greece's accession on the textile industry. I hope that the Commission will apply the multifibre arrangement and any transitional arrangements with greater vigour than hitherto because it has been singularly inert. The previous Labour Government spent much time and effort renegotiating the MFA in the hope that the EEC would apply it vigorously, as was indicated.
      The British Textile Confederation circulated a draft letter to all hon. Members with textile constituencies. It said:
      "Imports from the Mediterranean countries continue to be the weakest area of the EEC's textile policy, despite some limitations resulting from industry pressure. Restraint agreements have now been reached with Malta and Cyprus—but at the highest level of penetration yet achieved, and in breach of the global ceilings for the most sensitive products.
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      Greece and Spain have authorised the export to the UK market of larger quantities than the limits to which they had agreed."
      If we approve the Bill, and if the clause stands part, will there be transitional arrangements to protect the United Kingdom textile industry; or will Greece be allowed immediate free movement of goods, to the enormous detriment of the British textile industry?
      The British Textile Confederation gives a list of sensitive items. In category 3.2 we find woven pile fabrics, the country of origin of which is Greece. The quota ceiling for 1979 was 259 tonnes. Yet the imports between January and July totalled 512 tonnes—almost double the trigger level agreed by the EEC. That is not good enough.
      When we talk in glowing terms of countries working together, we should recognise that a breach of international obligations of that sort puts people on the dole and has catastrophic consequences for industrial relations. We must be clear that arrangements of this sort must be undertaken properly. The EEC Commission must be more vigorous in the application of transitional arrangements.
      In a research brief on the European Commission's general guidelines for a textile and clothing industry policy, the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers points out on page 12:
      "We feel that this move shows the lack of sincerity in the Commission's broad statement seeing the textile industry as essential to the Community, unless they intend it (the textile industry) to belong to the anticipated new member states such as Greece, Spain and Portugal. This possibility is not as remote as it may first appear. Only recently Greece has agreed to restrictions on its free movement of labour and agricultural goods on its accession in 1981. It would indeed be strange if it had nothing in exchange, and as its largest manufacturing industry is textiles, transitional provisions should also be agreed. But this does not seem to carry the political weight as does the prospect of Greek workers flooding into West Germany."
      Therefore, West Germany has already made provision for the accession of Greece. I suspect that we have not. I suspect that in the usual way we shall obey the rules while every other country bends them to its own advantage.
      The significance of this Bill is that it is not only sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which is blind to the problems of industry, and always has been, but is also sponsored by Ministers

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      at the Departments of Trade and Industry, which means that they have set their seal on Greek accession. What else have they done about the products of Greece and the orderly marketing arrangements that they were talking about yesterday?
      We do not want to see another Granada Television programme with stories from Greece rather like the one of 13 February 1979, which was entitled "The Shirt off our Backs". Statistics produced in that programme showed why 3,500 European clothing factories have shut in the last few years, throwing half a million people out of work. There must be some sort of parity of competition. That Granada programme talked about a woman called Jean Johnson, who has been a Stockport shirt machinist for 12 years. She is married, has three children, and earns £42 a week. In Hong Kong, 4,000 workers doing the same job get £27 a week each, while in Sri Lanka, Hema Pattirame, a girl working in a clothing factory leaves home at 4 am every day and gets back at 8 pm. She gets £2.50 a week—
      The Chairman: Order. The hon. Member must understand that what goes on in Sri Lanka does not have great relevance to a Bill dealing with Greek accession to the European Community.
      Mr. Cryer: Then I shall try to point out the relevance, Mr. Weatherill. Having accepted that clause 1 should stand part of the Bill, we do not want to see future comparisons of that sort in a television programme which spotlights the differences in wages and working conditions between Greece and the United Kingdom when Greece has free circulation of textiles within the United Kingdom. Other hon. Members have pointed out that they wish to welcome Greece into the EEC without any inhibitions. I contend that, if that sort of programme is shown, it will cause deep resentment, contrary to the expressions of view that have been heard so far in the debate today. I am only sorry that the two new clauses were not incorporated in the Bill, because I feel that scrutiny of expenditure from the budget is important.
      6.15 pm
      Another important matter is the question of State aids. As it happens, textiles, footwear and clothing are the industries that have received most of the temporary employment subsidies. The
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      European Commissioners stopped the last Labour Government from carrying on with TES and thus preserving vital jobs in the textile industry. In my constituency of Keighley, 2,000 jobs were supported by TES. Therefore, if State aids are to be warped in any way by Greece becoming a member of the EEC, we should know about it now and get the information from the Minister who is to reply to the debate.
      The textile industries are vulnerable. This is causing concern. We have a modern wool and textile industry in this country, brought about by the wool industry reorganisation scheme, which was introduced by the last Conservative Government and developed by the Labour Government. Yet mills are still closing. In the first few months of this year, 6,000 jobs have been lost in Yorkshire and Humberside alone because of the advent of cheap imports. Greece is causing further concern to the British Textile Confederation, the wool textile delegation and the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers, which deals with the wool and textile side.
      In conclusion, I should point out that when the drum was being beaten for the referendum in 1975, when millions of pounds were being poured into a massive propaganda campaign, when the Eurofanatics, who were in a majority in the Cabinet of the then Government, failed deliberately to place any limit on expenditure, because that action benefited their side, the textile employers were saying that they wanted to get into the Common Market. It was a massive market in which they could do wonderfully well They would have a huge domestic market in which to sell their goods. The motor manufacturers and executives, with the exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson), were the same. Now it has all blown up in our faces. We have a massive balance of payments deficit with the Common Market, and that will continue.
      Mr. Tom Hibbert, the chairman of the wool textile delegation, has pointed out that the wool textile employers actually supported the Common Market and inserted advertisements and messages about "jobs for the boys" in the newspapers. That has a rather sour ring about it now. Now that the EEC is being enlarged by Greece's accession, the

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      message from Tom Hibbert is that the effect of the Common Market would appear to be so harmful that we should consider our position within it.
      When this Bill is passed, the problems will not go away. We shall continue to hear concern expressed by the textile and other industries, and we shall not be able to exercise control over our own economy, investment, development and imports as long as we remain members of the EEC. By all means let clause 1 stand part of the Bill and let Greece and other countries come into the Community. This will help to erode this arrangement that is called the Common Market. Let us instead develop an arrangement whereby we meet equally as partners together, not only with other EEC countries but with those in the European Free Trade Area. Let us have a common negotiated trading arrangement. That is what the accession of Greece—and of Spain and Portugal—will ultimately mean.
      The EEC will change as a result of the accession of Greece; and the supporters of the Bill know it. They are torn between two things. If they vote to keep Greece out of the Common Market, they will be denying what they call democratic rights—although there is not much democracy inside the EEC. Therefore, they are bound to accept the accession of Greece, but they know that the accession of countries with middle-range economies, such as Greece, will mean a radical change in the Common Market.
      The accession of Greece will weaken and broaden the Community to a point where it will cease to be able to function as the political unit which the Eurofanatics on the Conservative Benches—and, alas, some Labour Members—would like to develop. We should keep the Common Market as a commercial trading organisation. I should like to see the Commission—with the Government prodding the Commission—make sure that Greece's accession does not bring dissension and grief because of the loss of jobs in the textile and other industries.
      By all means, let clause 1 stand part of the Bill, but with the reservations that I have stated.
      The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hurd): It is natural that Members from all parts of the Committee should seek
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      an explanation of the Bill and of the whole question of Greek accession in the clause stand part debate. It is also right—I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) and my hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Sir B. Braine) for putting the matter in its essential perspective—to consider the future relationship between Greece, the EEC and this country. Both my hon. Friends are well known in the House, and have been for years, for their work in developing friendship between Britain and Greece. I echo what they said.
      If I catch the eye of the Chair on Third Reading, I should like to repeat succinctly the political reasons that led the Government to introduce the Bill. I should like now to concentrate on some of the points on which explanations are required.
      It is natural that the hon. Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) should concentrate on the Community budget. That is a matter on which the whole House of Commons needs to be vigilant. It is a major issue here, in the country and in Europe.
      There are two major aspects. The first is that of our own contribution, which has been discussed over and over again in the House. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will carry our case to Dublin. The second related major factor is the total imbalance between what is sensible and what is nonsensical in the present level of spending on agriculture. The proportion is far too high for common sense.
      Incidentally, in the interest of historical accuracy, I tell the hon. Lady that she should not say that we on this side of the Committee discovered these absurd and expensive elements only after the election. I could, though it would be tedious, refer her to dozens of speeches made by my right hon. and hon. Friends, and by myself, pointing out these absurdities. We feel that the previous Government were setting about correcting them in the wrong way. History will show which tactics are the most fruitful. That is an unending argument, and the hon. Lady should not distort the record before it is complete.
      The imbalance of the CAP as a whole will not drift on. The policy will hit its

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      ceiling—we do not know exactly when—and when that happens it will compel a rethink of the policy.
      Greek accession is a minor factor in the budgetary argument. I agree with my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) that it would be wrong to give Greece the impression that we are laying the blame for present difficulties on Greek accession, or that we think that they would be aggravated by Greek accession. We estimate that the size of the agricultural budget will be increased by about 5 per cent. as a result of Greek accession. That is not a figure to be wholly ignored, but it is not a figure to be blown up as being responsible for the difficulties.
      I should like to give a number of other up-to-date figures in advance of the discussion of new clause 1. They are slightly different from those given by the previous Government early last year. We estimate now that after all the transitional periods are complete Greece will be a net beneficiary of the Common Market to the extent of about £390 million a year. Under existing arrangements, that means that the British net contribution will be increased by about £65 million a year at the end of the transitional period. It is precisely these arrangements that we are seeking to change. We regard our proportion of the total as unfair.
      I am giving figures under the existing arrangements. The cost will be less in earlier years, because the figures that I have given are for the years at the end of the transitional period. Obviously, in the earlier years Greece will be receiving less and paying less. For example, in the first year after accession the net cost to Britain will be between £5 million and £10 million.
      I turn now to the point made by the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) about textiles. The philosophy that he expounded about Europe contained many contradictions. First, we had the familiar cry that the concept of the Community was too small and too narrow with nine countries posing as Europe. He then used that argument against enlarging it to 10, and will no doubt use it in time against enlarging the Community further. The hon. Gentleman might say that even then the Community is too narrow and that the whole world should be in the Community.
      1392
      Yet the hon. Gentleman went on to make a familiar case—I thought he made his case powerfully—for the protection of the British textile industry against the whole world. We had a thorough debate on that matter yesterday, and I refer him to the robust speech by my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade about the balance which any British Government have to keep between the legitimate interests of the textile industry and the legitimate interests of the British consumer. That is a real balance, and the consumer is becoming more conscious of it.
      I do not wish to go back over that ground, except to say that, as regards Greece, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will draw the attention of the bodies whose declarations he read out to article 130 of the Treaty. That article lists action which can be taken by Community countries in the event of their industries being disrupted by imports from Greece during the transitional period. The article contains as reasonable an undertaking as can be given at this stage, short of telling Greece that we are so concerned about our textile industry that we shall slam the door in her face and not let her in.
      Mr. Sydney Bidwell: I welcome the entry of Greece, Portugal and Spain into the EEC. Their membership will make a qualitative change to the Community, because the EEC is no longer just a rich man's club. Does not the hon. Gentleman see a contradiction in what we are doing? We have the possibility of free movement of labour from such countries as Greece and yet we showed earlier today that we are scared to death of allowing in any more workers from the Indian sub-continent.
      Mr. Hurd: The hon. Member spoke earlier this afternoon after the statement of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on immigration, and he will no doubt raise the matter again. I do not wish to be drawn into that discussion, though it is pertinent, and the hon. Gentleman has made his point.
      6.30 pm
      Both the hon. Member for Keighley and the hon. Member for Crewe referred to State aids. Here again, there is some confusion in their philosophy. The main discussion about State aids during the

      1393
      last Parliament resulted from the then Government's clinging to State aids. They said how wrong it was for the Commission to start undermining the marvellous process that we had in this country for sustaining jobs by State aids.
      When we came into office, we found a whole series of rather excited arguments going on between the British Government and the Commission on these points. We are gradually and sensibly bringing those arguments to a close. Now we find that when it comes to Greece the hon. Lady is on the other side of the argument. She is now concerned to argue that it is very important that Greece should not be allowed the rights and privileges or the ability to have State aids, which Ministers in the last Government so closely embraced and so insisted on when it was on their side of the argument.
      Mrs. Dunwoody: I must apologise if my inability to express myself in clear English is such that I did not make the hon. Gentleman understand. I have absolutely no objection to Greece's supporting those of her industries that are sensitive. Indeed, I wish that we had the same kind of protection. What I am worried about is that the Community is insisting that Greece should get rid of her existing supports. If nothing else, the hon. Gentleman must acquit me of being two-faced on this matter.
      Mr. Hurd: Then I must refer solely to the hon. Member for Keighley. I thought that the hon. Lady was on the same point, but I now understand that she was on a contradictory point. The hon. Gentleman was certainly anxious that the Greeks might be able to subsidise their textile industry and create unfair competition for British jobs.
      Mr. Cryer: I must enable the hon. Gentleman to grasp this point thoroughly. What I was saying was that the Commission should not expunge State aids from Greece in the same way as it forced us to get rid of temporary employment subsidy. What was valuable for this country should be permitted elsewhere in the Community.
      Mr. Hurd: But it is not sensible to have a competition in State aids through the Community. It simply leads to extravagance after extravagance. It is a con
      1394
      tinuing process, as each country feels compelled to match the State aids given by others. This is what has happened in practice. The philosophy of the Treaty in this matter is correct.
      I am very interested in the Opposition's statement—I am sorry if I got it wrong originally—that they are now anxious that the Greeks should be able to subsidise their industries, including the textile industry, and that this right should not be impeded. It goes against the drift of the hon. Gentleman's argument.
      As regards the provisions under the arrangements that we are now discussing for State aids, the Greeks on entering the Community will be subject to articles 92 and 93, which deal with State aids. Protocol No. 7 attached to the documents, which refers to the Greek Government's general industrial policy, says that their obligations under those articles will have to be weighed against the Community's endorsement of that policy.
      That is an attempt in diplomatic language to state a balance, which I think on the whole the Committee would think reasonable, between the interests that the hon. Lady has just been talking about—the reasonable interests of a partly developing country such as Greece—and the Community's general concern not to allow a continuous auction of State aids, which, when exaggerated, could end in beggaring everybody.
      The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), who I know must leave shortly, asked a number of important and serious questions, as did the hon. Lady, about the Community's institutions and the effect on them of Greek membership.
      The hon. Gentleman dealt first with the problem of the tower of Babel, the problem of the burden on the Community and the confusion inside it created by the proportion of its resources, its time and its business involved simply in translating from one language into another. He quoted a letter that he had received from my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) which represented as much as we can say on the matter at present.
      I am sure that all hon. Members grasp the essential points. First, a Minister or a Member of Parliament of a member

      1395
      State must be allowed to express himself in his own language. Secondly, a Greek farmer must have available in Greek the instruments of the Community that affect his livelihood. The hon. Gentleman did not dispute either of those points, but they add substantially to the problem of the tower of Babel.
      Within those two clear needs, we should like to see some rationalisation, a commonsense approach to the question of how often there must be full deployment of all the languages. The problem is now being examined. The report of the Three Wise Men, including Mr. Dell, will be before the summit meeting in Dublin, but I doubt whether the Heads of Government will have a great deal of time at that meeting to go into it in detail. That is not because the problems are unimportant. I believe that on the whole they are extremely important, for the reasons given by the hon. Gentleman. But there are other problems that fall into the same category: the number of Commissioners, the whole question of the Commission's structure and the parliamentary consequences of enlargement.
      There is the Spierenburg report, which was commissioned by the Commission, in addition to the report of the Three Wise Men. I cannot enlarge on those reports. They are not before us now, and the Government have not received the latter report. Therefore, it is too early to comment on it.
      I simply make one personal comment, as someone who has tried to follow these matters for three or four years, as has the hon. Gentleman. I agree with him about the need to go back to the drawing board. We should not assume that we must simply add on what seems to be the mathematically right number of extra people.
      The enlargement enables us—it forces us—to look again at the structures and see whether they are sensible. Therefore, I hope and believe, on the basis of what I have read and heard on the subject, that this opportunity will be taken not simply to make purely automatic adjustments upwards but to look again at the underlying concepts and see whether we can streamline these matters and make them better.
      Certainly, as the hon. Gentleman said, there is outstanding business. We have the Treaty of Accession before us, but there
      1396
      is continuing business, as there is bound to be. Road haulage quotas are obvious examples. The whole system is being looked at again. It is not sensible to negotiate a quota for Greece when the whole system is being examined.
      Another example is the relationship between Greece and the ACP countries. There is a whole series of consequential subjects that will take a considerable time to work out. Nobody needs to apologise for the fact that they are not yet cut and dried.
      The hon. Lady referred to a very important point—the Copenhagen declaration and the whole question of human rights. We should be a little chary of telling other people how to run their countries. But it is fair to say that the previous Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, with the agreement of the then Opposition, took the lead in working out the Copenhagen declaration, which was that the existing and future members should be good practitioners of democracy. Article 3, paragraph 3, of the Treaty of Accession says that the new member—Greece in this case—will be bound by declarations adopted by common agreement within the Community.
      That matter should not obscure the remarkable achievement of the Greeks in this area. They have extricated themselves, without a great deal of help from anybody else, from one form of totalitarian rule without falling into the other and opposite form. If there were no other factor, that would be a reason why the Committee should give to the Greek application not a sour or crabbed response but a warm and wholehearted response, by approving the Bill.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
      Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    New Clause 1

      OBLIGATION OF FOREIGN SECRETARY TO REPORT TO PARLIAMENT
      'The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs shall lay before Parliament annually a report analysing the effect on the Community Budget of the accession of Greece to the European Economic Community.'.—[Mrs. Dunwoody.]
      Brought up, and read the First time.
      The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to take new clause 2—State aids in Community—
      'Nothing in this Act shall be taken to invalidate the existing system of State aids within the Community.'.
      Mrs. Dunwoody: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
      It is important that the House should be informed about what is going on in the Community. The hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir B. Braine) said that we must ask not only the Greeks but others to account to the Community for their activities. In my speech on clause 1, I made it clear that we welcome the accession of Greece to the Community. However, that does not mean that we are satisfied with the internal machinery.
      One way in which the Government could adapt their existing procedures and keep the House more fully informed would be to give a close analysis annually or biennially of the effect on the budget of the accession of a new member State. That would not be a discriminatory move against a new member State, but it is a proposal that we would have wished to see put into operation some time ago. Some hon. Members would like to see a change in our own treaty so that the House would have the right to look at individual decisions before they are taken. However, that proposal is not before us today and I should be ruled out of order if I pursued the matter.
      The budget is obviously the kernel of the development. Long and erudite discussions on how we wish to see the Community proceeding do not matter if there is no money to meet existing commitments. We have known that for a long time. It has not been thrust von us at short notice. The Agriculture Commissioner has spelt out that fact time and again. That is why he introduced the co-responsibility levy, which, in real terms, he was forced to withdraw, and why he suggested changes in commodity agreements. The Commissioner also hoped that the Tory Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food would not agree to any price increases in the last price review. He specifically hoped that Britain would hold a line on the budget and demand that there should
      1398
      be no increases in the price of commodities in surplus.
      The House never receives a proper account of the minutiae of the Community. That is understandable. Paper flows out of the Commission and the other institutions of the Community at the speed of light and it is difficult for hon. Members to follow all the details. Nevertheless, the practical result of that is that Ministers go to Brussels on our behalf, sometimes without even a discussion of the regulations or directives on which decisions are to be reached. They take the decisions and come back to this place to report on them. I believe that we are not fully informed. Yet we are being asked to pay a disproportionately high proportion of the budget.
      6.45 pm
      I welcome the stand that appears to be taken by the Government towards the imbalances. Nevertheless, if the right hon. Lady the Prime Minister returns from Dublin with egg on her face she will find it difficult to explain to the House why she was so convinced that the matter should be immediately put right and that the British taxpayer could no longer support the intolerable burden of our contribution to the Community. She will find it hard to explain why she has had to climb down when it comes to the crunch.
      I hope that the Government will seriously consider accepting new clause 1. Indeed, they may take it as a pattern for our relationships with other countries in the new accession treaties. If the Government have the opportunity to say what they think is essential about the budget and what should be changed, I believe that they would receive much more support from all parts of the House. Any budget that spends 80 per cent. on agriculture and 20 per cent. on everything else is so manifestly unbalanced that it cannot conceivably continue as it is.
      Agriculture welded the Community together, but I believe that agriculture will blow it disastrously apart. The political implications of the refusal of political will in the Community are great. There has been no real indication of a change of mind. It is all very well for us to say that our colleagues on the Continent have great sympathy with us and

      1399
      are aware of our difficulties. They will not accept a change in the make-up of the budget, because they know that if we pay less someone else must pay more. If Britain had taken a higher proportion of the regional and social funds, that would have been one way out. That proposal was blocked off by Conservative Members' refusal to allow any increase in the regional and social funds.
      For four years I had the grand title of vice-president of the Social Affairs Committee in the European Assembly. I watched the tiny sum of money that was so desperately needed to help employment, youth retraining, and the position of women being snarled up in the machinery of elephantine incompetence. I learned that there was little likelihood that the Community, by using the social and regional funds, would be able to change the imbalance between rich and poor regions.
      We should take care that we do not start to talk about the Community of the centre and the Community of the periphery. Greece is in real danger of joining us in an unenviable position—being part of the Community of the periphery. The investment, jobs and money go to the centre and those who are on the fringes are badly treated.
      I hope that the Government will resolve that there must be changes in the budget. All the good Tory Europeans have failed to put forward one good practical alternative to the existing funding arrangements. The Minister of State said that the Government do not know when we will run out of money. We do know that it will be in 18 months' time—at the latest. That will come at a time when some other European States will be facing their electorate. When European politicians believe that their votes will be affected, they are hardly likely to agree to a vast change in the pattern of funding which will take money away from their electorate.
      The agriculture policy is manifestly untenable. Not only is it not in the interests of the Eupropean consumer but it is not in the interests of the small European farmer. Large farmers have done well out of it, but many small European farmers have not received any real benefit from the CAP. If the money runs out and no political decisions have been
      1400
      taken, there is a real danger that the Community will blow itself apart. What is put in its place may be even more damaging than the existing funding of the Community, though that seems unlikely to many of us.
      Why does the Minister not say that the Government wish that they had thought of the idea and that since the Opposition have been kind enough to put it forward they will accept it? They could explain to the House in detail the budgetary implications of what is happening in the Community. When we reach the brave new world in which Britain will, at long last, pay a great deal less and the French and the Germans will pay a great deal more, the Government will be able to explain in considerable detail how the funding is going and why countries such as Greece will find it difficult to get the transfer of resources that they will need for their structural changes.
      The Minister did not mention the point that I stressed earlier, namely, that under the guarantee fund Greece will have considerable difficulty in getting the transfer of resources that it will need to bring its agriculture up to even a reasonable standard.
      We are giving the Minister a marvellous opportunity. He is basically a gracious gentleman and he can accept the opportunity with grace. Instead of suggesting that we are distorting the picture, the hon. Gentleman can remedy a previous mistake and agree that the House should be given a great deal of information, more opportunities to debate that information, and an annual report making clear what changes are needed in the budgetary arrangements of the Community.
      Mr. Cryer: I support the new clause, and I am sure that the Government, with their new attitude towards Common Market expenditure, will welcome it. I may not be here for the Minister's reply, because I have to attend a meeting at 7 o'clock. I hope that the Minister will forgive me.
      Since the Government are saying, as they were not before the general election, that Community expenditure and our contribution are out of hand, I am sure that they will accept the new clause as an element of accountability to this Parliament—a development that has not so far been

      1401
      noticeable as a consequence of our membership of the Common Market.
      When the Labour Government were in power, the then Leader of the Opposition said that we were being too abrasive in our attitude towards the Common Market, because we were saying that £1 billion a year was too much. Since, according to all sorts of non-attributable briefings and statements made hither and thither, the Prime Minister has developed an abrasive attitude herself about what she intends to do at the Dublin summit, the rather gentle new clause, which sets out in such a succinct and reasonable way how the expenditure relating to the accession of Greece should be accountable to this Parliament, should be acceptable to the Government. It will enable them to express the view that our relationship with the Community should be accountable to the House.
      We see our powers dribbling away to the Common Market and the decisions of Commissioners becoming increasingly important. We are told that we cannot take certain action without the approval of the Commissioners. Civil servants, particularly in the Department of Trade, which is staffed virtually from top to bottom with dedicated Euro-fanatics, tell Ministers that they cannot take certain actions because they will offend the Common Market. I have no knowledge of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but I have no doubt that the process is repeated there.
      The new clause will help in a minor way to establish a relationship in which there is some degree of accountability to the House, so that we may debate the effects of Greek accession on the EEC budget. It is not unreasonable to suggest that elected hon. Members should have an opportunity to debate the real issues of the Common Market, the application of funds and the distortion, beneficial effect or whatever that the accession of Greece will have on the Community budget.
      The most important and all-embracing topic of discussion at present is the massive amounts of money being poured away in the EEC. We are contributing a significant proportion of that money. Why should there not be some degree of accountability to us?
      Mr. Hurd: The hon. Members for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) and Keighley (Mr. Cryer) have reasonably used the new clause as a peg on which to hang another discussion of the general problem of the European budget. It was a little puzzling to listen to them, since they gave the impression that the House of Commons had no opportunity to discuss EEC matters. In fact, they have both taken a prominent part in our elaborate procedures for discussing such matters. We have a Scrutiny Committee to enable us to have those discussions.
      Over the years, I concluded that what was wrong was not so much the procedures, the legal situation or even the attitude of Governments, but that the debates in the House were usually rather drab and scanty and did not reflect the importance of the issues under discussion.
      The EEC budget is a classic example. The hon. Member for Crewe gave the impression that the House had had no opportunity to discuss the budget. For several years, we have had a substantial debate in the House on the EEC budget, as a result of recommendations of the Scrutiny Committee. The first two such debates were dreary and I came away almost in despair because the Treasury Minister dealt simply with the dry sticks of the matter and did not encourage the House to launch into wider issues.
      This year there was a change and a substantial and rather good debate on the budget. The opportunity exists and was used properly this year. Since we have a lively Opposition on this matter, I am sure that such debates will be important and influential in the history of the House and will match the importance of the subject.
      It is not necessary to smuggle a new clause into an accession Bill for one new member of the EEC to secure proper consideration of the general matters that the hon. Lady discussed. The hon. Lady puts forward the new clause for reasons concerned with our position in relation to the European budget. We understand the reasons here. However, it would be widely misunderstood in Greece if we attempted to put a statutory obligation on our Government in respect of Greece alone—it has never happened before. The only explanation that would occur to our Greek friends is that there is some special

      1403
      reason, suspicion or doubt about Greek accession and that we were attributing to that accession some of the major problems facing us in the EEC budget. That would be taken amiss in Greece.
      7 pm
      Mr. Rees-Davies: In order to emphasise what my hon. Friend has rightly said, may I point out that we are the first country to move for Greece to become a member? When the matter passes to all the other member States, they will observe that the British have picked out Greece for this specific provision, which would then have to be discussed by all the other member States in their respective Parliaments.
      Mr. Hurd: My hon. and learned Friend is quite right. That may well be a consequence.
      The hon. Member for Crewe and the Opposition are right in pressing for the fullest possible information on this as on other Community matters. Earlier I gave the up-to-date figures for the financial effects of Greek membership, particularly upon ourselves. I am quite willing to undertake that from time to time—maybe once a year, as was suggested—we shall make available to the House in what seems to be the most convenient form figures to show the effect of Greek membership. We are perfectly prepared to find a way of doing that. It should not be difficult, as it has not proved difficult today. I ask the hon. Lady, however, not to impose a statutory obligation which could lead to a good deal of difficulty of a kind that I am sure that she is not seeking to create.
      Question put and negatived.
      Bill reported, without amendment.
      7.2 pm
      Mr. Hurd: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
      As we come towards the end of the discussion, it is right that, on behalf of the Government, I should emphasise the warm welcome which we and our predecessors in the last Government have given throughout to the Greek application. Of course, as the debate has again illustrated, the application creates complications and problems for the Greeks, for ourselves and for our partners. But we should not let the complications disguise the fact that the Greeks are paying
      1404
      Europe the compliment of accepting that the European Community is now the focus of European co-operation.
      Quite naturally, we are so absorbed in our own criticisms of the way in which the Community works that we sometimes forget that to those outside looking in, the Community, with all its failures, represents the most hopeful form of co-operation that Europe has ever achieved. One proof of that is the application and decision by Greece to join. Having thrown off one kind of totalitarian rule without falling into the grasp of another, Greece's record of democratic achievement is such that it has a very powerful argument to put to Members of this House, given our concern for democracy.
      It is not open for us to say that Greece is not a European country. I do not think that anyone has ever ventured to make that remark. I do not think either that it is open for us to say that we in the Community are in such a muddle over skimmed milk, butter, wine and lamb that we propose to shut the door in the face of Greece until we have sorted it all out, whatever the consequences for them.
      We must take a larger view than that, and both major parties in this country have taken that larger view. We accept that there is a good deal of work still to be done. There are a good many important matters of an institutional and economic nature still to be resolved. However, at the moment that Greece joins the Community one would have to be lacking in historical imagination not to regard that as a splendid step forward in the history of Europe.
      7.5 pm
      Mrs. Dunwoody: On behalf of the Opposition I have the greatest pleasure in welcoming the accession of Greece to the Community. Most of those words that we hold most dear in the English language, including "democracy" and even "politics" itself, basically come from the Greek language. The reason why many of us still enjoy what is lightly called the advantage of a classical education is that it has always been firmly believed in this country that Greece, with its great cultural heritage and its great dramatic and economic history, has a great deal to offer us and the Community

      1405
      as a whole. We have always believed that it would certainly be to the advantage of the Community that Greece should join.
      However, the questions that we have raised today have, I hope, explored some of the difficulties that we envisage for the British Parliament in a larger Community and have put on record some of the difficulties that we frankly expect to face Greece after its accession. We do not believe that all will be sweetness and light, and there may even be occasions when—I know that this will surprise the Minister of State—we may not envisage the Community as the be-all and end-all of the future.
      Nevertheless, we shall extend the very warm hand of friendship to the Greek people when they join us. This House has a long history of welcoming democratic States and helping them to maintain that democracy. We hope that their future in the Community will be a happy and prosperous one, and we know that the Greek people will understand that they can always rely on us for support in their democratic future and ideals.
      7.7 pm
      Mr. Rees-Davies: I was delighted to hear the speech by the hon. Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody). I thank her and Labour Members who obviously had collectively to consider whether they would divide the Committee on the amendments which they had tabled for deciding, in their sound common sense, not to do so.
      I see on the Labour Benches the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Sandelson), who has long been associated with the Greek parliamentary group. I am sure that he will echo the view that I have expressed.
      I believe that when we pass the Bill tonight it will be regarded in Greece as a moment of some importance. Ours is the first country to grant and approve its accession. Others will follow, and it is right that with our joint heritage with Greece, Britain should have been the first mover in this matter.
      These developments are of great importance, because Greece has been through an exceptionally difficult period in the last 30 or 40 years. There has
      1406
      been the closest liaison between Greece and certain great Members of this House and another place, whose memories are always treasured in Greece. I refer, for example, to Lord Jellicoe and the immeasurable and brilliant way in which he supported Greece in the war. I refer to Monty Woodhouse, a Member of this House for many years, who was a great friend of Greece and was of immeasurable assistance to it in the war. There are others. It is that link which provides a great political connection and a great link of friendship in times of war.
      Greece had a civil war. Those who have been through a civil war realise that it is perhaps worse than any other form of war in terms of tearing person from person. Thereafter the Greeks suffered a great indignity, the period of the generals' dictatorship. It says much for them that they survived, threw off the yoke of dictatorship and subsequently created a successful and improving country. They are improving their quality of life, method of civilisation, and industrial production. They are now almost the world leaders of the tourist industry. I hope that as a result of their success in that area they will contribute greatly, in many ways, to the EEC.
      Of course the Greeks have grave problems. Their country is poor. Their small population occupies a large area of land. They have considerable problems with agriculture and the exports that they can generate. Therefore, the deficit must largely be made up by tourism. Both the Greeks and ourselves recognise that we can follow the road of European civilisation. It is not only the money; we look forward to an improvement in the life of our civilised society.
      For political reasons and for the sake of our associations with Greece, we believe that we are doing a good night's work when we pass the Bill. It will be of benefit to Greece and Britain. It will bring people of commanding thought to assist us gradually to conquer the problems of Europe, so that ultimately we shall see the light of an improved future.
      7.12 p.m.
      Mr. Neville Sandelson: I do not wish to take up more than a minute or so as almost everything that I would wish to say has been said already, not only by the hon. and learned

      1407
      Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) but by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody), who spoke on behalf of the Opposition. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the warm way in which she expressed the feeling of the Opposition about the accession of Greece to the European Community.
      There are many outstanding issues between the Government, the Opposition and the Community. It is important for the nation that they should be sorted out. We hope that they will be. We are all at one on that. However, the fact remains that the Community holds out the greatest hope for Western order and civilisation and the defence of Western values against those people in Europe and elsewhere, but primarily in Eastern Europe, who now threaten the values to which I allude.
      For those reasons, especially for political reasons, the accession of Greece is to be welcomed by all hon. Members. The accession of Greece will add enormously to the strength of the Community in different ways, not detract from it. There will be a new atmosphere of deepening friendship between ourselves and Greece, to our mutual advantage.
      7.14 p.m.
      Mr. William Wilson: I was a soldier in the Greek Army 34 years ago. Understandably, at that time I came to have a great affection for things Greek and Greece. In the humble capacity in which I served, I never expected that the day would come when, in this House, I should welcome Greece as a member of a European community. I hope that my support tonight may be of more use to Greece than were my services as a soldier.
      It is good to have Greece with us. The Greek soldiers used to say to me: "There was a time in 1940 and 1941 when it was just you and us alone." They were right. I hope that the combination now being set up will be as successful as the co-operation in more difficult days.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

  SHIPBUILDING BILL
  Considered in Committee.
  [Mr. RICHARD CRAWSHAW in the chair]

  SHIPBUILDING BILL
    Clause 1

      BRITISH SHIPBUILDERS: LIMIT ON BORROWING ETC.
      Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
      7.18 pm
      Dr. John CunninghamI begin by declaring an interest. I am a sponsored member of the General and Municipal Workers Union, which represents a large number of men who work in the shipbuilding industry. It is important to put that on record.
      I intended to welcome what the Minister had to say. However, as he did not say anything, I may move on quickly.
      I give a general welcome to the intention of clause 1. It is an important provision. However, the Opposition have a number of questions about what is intended in raising the limits imposed by section 11 of the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act 1977 in relation to the finances of British Shipbuilders. We welcome the recognition of the need to do that and the Government's apparent commitment, on this occasion at least, to use public money. We wish that that commitment could be more widespread. The Opposition would have taken similar action if we had been in power. In that sense, we are satisfied with the provisions of Clause 1.
      It is in the national interest to have an effective industrial capability in merchant shipbuilding, defence shipbuilding, marine engines and our oil industry requirements. However, the financial provisions relate to the two-year time scale that the Government set for the industry.
      Are the new limits sufficient? Is the provision large enough in view of the situation obtaining in the shipbuilding industry? Perhaps, subsidiary to those questions, I may put a few more detailed points to the Minister. The strategy of British Shipbuilders is to maintain a capacity of about 400,000 to 450,000 tons

      1409
      in merchant shipbuilding. The orders situation leads us to conclude that that may well be difficult. The Minister of State made that point before. We understand it. The berth programme of British Shipbuilders is serious. There is a need for much more vigorous Government action on orders. If action is forthcoming, as we urge, will the limits set in the Bill be sufficient to enable British Shipbuilders to fulfil extra orders?
      I recall the action taken by the previous Administration on the Polish deal. That deal was much decried, at the time, by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen now in Government. However, not only was it useful to British Shipbuilders but it met with the approbation of the Public Accounts Committee.
      The berth programme prompts us to ask whether the financial provisions are sufficient because the situations on the Clyde, the Tyne, the Wear, the Tees and Merseyside are urgent. The second question of detail arises because of the lowering of support for the industry as a result of the reduced intervention fund. The Government have made much of their role in this matter, but the intervention fund is now a failure. In no way does it match up to the real value of previous provisions, nor does it match up to what British Shipbuilders demanded. The level of support has gone down to 25 per cent. The attitude of British Shipbuilders was that the previous rate of 30 per cent. should be abolished and that there should be no support element. This lower level, however, will have an effect on the financing of the industry.
      Much has been said of the need for a scrap-and-build programme. We have not seen any progress in the provision of such a programme by the Government. We regret that. It is an important matter. If a scrap-and-build programme were agreed—as we urge that it should be soon—it would expose the need for additional finance for British Shipbuilders. I refer the Minister to the document adopted by the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions. The confederation recently discussed the general situation and in particular it argued in favour of the building of a much higher proportion of the United Kingdom tonnage in British yards.
      1410
      It also argued for an early agreement on, and implementation of, a scrap-and-build policy, advance public sector orders and further defence orders. We understand that defence expenditure is to be increased, and perhaps the Minister will take on board the fact that some of that money should go to shipbuilding. The document also discusses the enforcement of the issue of segregated ballast tanks, the accelerated diversification of products and the installation of inert gas systems where necessary. These are proposals which could bring much-needed work to the yards but they require extra financial provision.
      Are the Government really fighting for orders for the yards? We have not seen much evidence of great conviction in that respect. We would welcome more vigorous action because that would have an impact on the ability of the industry to finance itself within the provisions set out in clause 1 of the Bill.
      Apart from the arguments which relate specifically to British Shipbuilders, there is also the question of the effect of inflation on the financial provisions. Inflation is rising rapidly and likely to go on rising and we understand that there is the likelihood of an increase in minimum lending rate which would affect the industry in many ways. Wages will have to be taken into account. It is against this inflationary background that we question the limits of the provisions. Capital investment proposals for the high technology and engineering sectors of British Shipbuilders prompt us to ask whether the limits set out in the clause are sufficient to meet the urgent and expanding needs of the industry.
      The Minister of State was in doubt about these limits when he introduced the Bill on Second Reading on 1 November. He said that he hoped that there would be sufficient provision. I do not know what the Minister's hon. Friends would think if he had to come back to the House on a subsequent occasion to ask for increased provision. If he did, we would not hesitate to support him, though we think it is better to get the matter clarified now.
      On industrial and employment grounds as well as on the grounds of national interest, British Shipbuilders should not be placed in difficulties. Because of the Minister's attitude to private

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      capital in the industry, yet another question arises under the heading of financial provision. He referred to this matter also on 1 November. What effect would changes in the industry have on the provisions? The Government should be more forthcoming about this when asking the Committee to agree to the Bill.
      I understand that British Shipbuilders in its corporate plan states that the worldwide industry is experiencing the worst crisis in memory. British Shipbuilders are not the only ones in difficulties, though the plan describes the crisis as a matter of survival for the industry. We want the industry to survive and we want a greater level of support through the intervention fund. The fund is now smaller. We want to see more capital expenditure in yards throughout the United Kingdom. Offshore activities are also a key factor in planning and should be given national priority. That could lead to a significant increase in the provision of jobs, particularly in. Scotland, where they are badly needed.
      There is a measure of agreement between management and unions about financial needs and about the need for aggressive action by the Government on public orders, defence measures and the intervention fund. Do the Government intend to change gear on these matters since they seem to be losing momentum? Against the background of the world shipbuilding recession, what does the Minister expect British Shipbuilders' trading loss to be in the next couple of years? That is a relevant question.
      These issues are vital and urgent. We expect a detailed response from the Minister. My hon. Friends also have many questions about their constituencies.
      7.30 pm
      Mr. W. E. Garrett: I am pleased with the progress of the Bill. I have followed closely the interests of the shipbuilding and ancillary industries and I cannot add much that is new to the argument. I had the pleasure, or misfortune, to sit through the long Committee stage of the Bill introduced by the previous Government. It is difficult to begin a new argument when one agrees basically with the general principle. One can always argue for a more generous injection from public funds, but at present the
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      money proposed is probably right in relation to the possible needs of the industry in the next three to four years.
      I am sure that the Minister will persuade the executive board of British Shipbuilders to indicate how much of the money will be used for further research. That is important. We must keep in a healthy state the research establishment at Wallsend in my constituency. We must also ensure the well-being of the research establishment at Teddington, where a different type of work is done. Research must be maintained and the results must be incorporated in future since that could give us an advantage when we compete for orders in three or four years' time.
      There is a slightly more optimistic mood on the Tyne following recent orders. They are welcome and we are also pleased about the orders obtained for the Birkenhead and Govan yards. I am sure that hon. Members who represent those constituencies will have more to say about that.
      Naval contracts in the North-East have been completed on time and to the satisfaction of the contractor—the Admiralty. Perhaps the Admiralty will use its influence and encourage other contractors to use the North-East yards.
      This is a difficult time for the shipbuilding and repair industries. Morale is low. Perhaps we shall be telling a different story this time next year. There may be some improvement. The longer that ships are at sea, the quicker their life expectancy diminishes. Inevitably, British ships will have to be replaced. If they are not, insurance premiums will increase and that will add to the operating costs. World shipowners will be looking for yards which can rebuild their fleets. The money provided in the Bill, if it is used wisely, will secure those future orders.
      Hon. Members who represent shipbuilding constituencies have not been too critical of the Conservative Party. We could have rubbed our hands with glee at the possibility of the Minister having to do a partial about-turn on his party's philosophy. We have resisted that because the broad principle is generally accepted by both parties and by both the present and previous Governments. I hope that the Bill progresses merrily and speedily tonight and that it is placed on the statute hook as quickly as possible.
      Mr. Don Dixon: I apologise for being absent at the close of the debate on 1 November. If I had known in advance that I would be absent, I would have mentioned it. I received an urgent telephone message about the serious illness of a close relative. I had to depart immediately for home. I was well up the M1 when the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Fletcher), was making sarcastic remarks about my absence. I accept that he made those remarks in ignorance.
      Clause 1 does not go far enough. My constituency relies a great deal on shipbuilding, ship repairing and marine engineering. The town in which I was born and which I now represent was built on a tradition of steelmaking, shipbuilding and ship repairing. In the 1930s we went through the traumatic experience which Shotton and Corby are now facing.
      In his more enlightened remarks on Second Reading the Minister said:
      "The main brunt of the contraction in recent years has been met in Merseyside and the North-East of England. Since mid-1977 over half of the 8,000 jobs lost in British Shipbuilders were lost in the North-East alone."—[Offical Report, 1 November 1979; Vol. 972, c. 1577.]
      We all accept that. The male unemployment rate in my constituency is 16 per cent. The North-East relies on heavy engineering, shipbuilding and ship repairing. Any contraction in those industries adds to the already unacceptably high rate of unemployment.
      A lack of recruitment in the industry amounts to the same as redundancies, because if wasted jobs are not replaced school leavers are not offered apprenticeships.
      The shipbuilding industry is an important cornerstone of the industrial community. For economic, social and strategic reasons the industry should not be allowed to contract. The Tyne and Wear county council, to which I pay tribute, has done much to help the shipbuilding industry in the North-East. It held a conference, with other local authorities, in April this year to provide a national platform for discussion, among all the major sectors of the industry within the EEC, of the worldwide problems that face the shipbuilding and ship repairing industries. The conference carried the following resolution unanimously:
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      "This conference affirms its belief that a vigorous national shipping and shipbuilding industry is essential to this country. The aim must be to ensure that the industry survives the current world recession and remains effective in the face of increasing competition so as to take advantage of the recovery expected in the 80s. To this end this conference calls on all sectors of the industry to unite their efforts in a new spirit of partnership, to build on the skills and expertise within the industry and, with the full participation of Government, together with our partners in the EEC, to find ways of increasing its overall strength."
      At the same conference the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt), who was the chairman of the Conservative group on shipping and shipbuilding, said:
      "There must be no doubt as to the necessity to maintain a merchant shipbuilding capacity, as it cannot be left to others to supply the ships which carry Britain's and industrial Europe's seaborne trade."
      We would all agree with that. If the Prime Minister's nightmare ever comes true and we have those hairy Russians positioned across the Channel, it is as important to have merchant shipping to carry the supplies as it is to have warships.
      Despite the present deteriorating position of the industry—much of it beyond its control, caused mainly by subsidies and import controls in other countries—Britain is still the fourth largest shipbuilding nation in the world. It has always suffered from periodic demands, feasts and famines. The Geddes report in 1966 recognised that the private owners' failure to invest and adapt was one of the underlying causes of the industry not meeting the demand of the changing pattern of competition. Investment by private owners in British shipbuilding was pathetic. A survey carried out in the early 1970s showed that for every man employed in the industry the assets were £825. In West Germany the figure was over £1,000, in Italy it was £1,200, in Sweden it was £1,800 and in Japan it was £2,800.
      The following years did not help the British worker and his need for proper tools. After that survey the investment for every man in the industry was £80 In West Germany it was £162, in Japan it was £409 and in Sweden it was £554 It is small wonder that the efficiency of the United Kingdom shipbuilding industry was well below that of our competitors
      I referred in the debate on 1 November to platers' helpers pushing shell plates

      1415
      about in the shipyards on wooden barrows. Those were the sort of tools given to workers to compete with the rest of the world. Because of their greed for profit and their lack of investment, the private owners have much to answer for with regard to the state of the industry today. If it had not been for nationalisation, it is doubtful whether we would be discussing the industry tonight.
      Massive over-capacity in the industry internationally has given rise to intense competition for orders. Savage price cutting to levels well below the cost of production has resulted in bankruptcies among shipbuilders in many countries. That led to widespread financial intervention by Governments in the form of various subsidies, either as direct or indirect price support or in the form of soft credit packages to developing countries.
      In the financial pages of The Guardian on 4 July a report stated:
      "Unofficially there is concern on the British front that competitors are playing dirty tricks. British shipbuilders will point to a ferry order they lost to a West German yard offering below cost prices. … The yard then went bust but they continued the work, sustained by the German Government—a device well within EEC rules".
      The past 10 years have seen the cost of building ships double while the value of the ships has reduced by one-third.
      I deal now with the conditions that prevailed in the shipbuilding industry not so many years ago. The chairman of British Shipbuilders has said:
      "We are breaking down old-fashioned and deep-rooted attitudes and substituting informed, active and hard headed involvement with participation".
      Let us consider those old-fashioned and deep-rooted attitudes and understand how they came about. I speak from experience when I say that the British shipyard management was the most reactionary in British industry. I have heard debates in the House of Commons in which remarks by Conservative Members were purely academic. I doubt whether many of them have been nearer to a shipyard job and the conditions that workers face than lying in a deck chair on a liner cruising round the Mediterranean.
      7.45 pm
      Markets in the shipyards were abolished a few years prior to nationalisation. It was a tradition that started in the cattle markets. Early in the morning,
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      when it could be snowing, raining or hailing, we went to the gaffer's office and stood there for an hour or so until the gaffer came out—the rain was coming out of our laceholes—and said to some of us "You can start today, the rest of you go home". It is not so long since those conditions prevailed. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Newton (Mr. Evans) will remember those days.
      I was a shop steward in a shipyard where men working with welders were holding lugs about an inch and a half from the flame of the welding rod. The sparks went down our sleeves and we finished up with septic sores on our hands, yet the management would not provide us with gloves. They said "Why not look round the dock bottom and find some welders' old gloves?" I had to go to a central conference in York in my efforts to get these gloves. They cost 1s. 6d., or 7½p.
      When speaking of profitability. Conservative hon. Members should remember that when the snow comes this winter the workers will probably have to walk from the gates for a mile through the snow, climb up the gangway, shift the snow and chip the ice from their job before they can start work. That should be taken into consideration. Conditions in the shipyards are deplorable. There have been improvements since nationalisation, but I am speaking of a time not so many years ago. Shipwrights received the princely sum of 7s. 6d. for greasing the slipways the day before a ship was launched. We were up to our ankles in mud and slush on the after end of the ship putting grease on the slipways. Gloves were supplied for that job. The management set that payment without consultation and said that it was trying to cut costs. At the same time it stripped the joiners' shop of machinery in order to have a champagne party for the visitors and management after the launch of the ship. Those are the sort of conditions that prevailed in the shipbuilding industry.
      Few manual workers received pensions. Those who managed to live long enough to retire usually left with little or nothing, and often without a word of thanks. It was left to the workers to have a whip round to give them something when they retired.

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      My hon. Friends have raised many questions but the Minister is reticent in answering. Matters raised by my hon. Friends show where we stand. The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland said in the debate on 1 November:
      "Let me make it clear at the outset that we wish to see a viable and competitive shipbuilding industry in the United Kingdom. Along with other shipbuilding nations we recognise that with the present state of the market such an objective cannot be achieved without a measure of Government support".—[Official Report, 1 November 1979; Vol. 972, c. 1568.]
      Nobody would dispute that statement. The support has been given, but with a time limit that hangs over the shipyard workers' necks. This concerns many of my hon. Friends. We do not argue with that, but we emphasise that in a world where countries are giving subsidies to the shipbuilding industry, and while other countries have import controls, our industry requires a guarantee that it will be supported against unfair competition. No one is saying that shipyard workers have a divine right to work. However, Britain lives by exports and it will always need to build ships. We need a shipbuilding industry to build merchant ships.
      I know that ship repairing is not featured in clause 1 but I shall refer to it briefly. We are now hearing a great deal about scrap-and-build. If and when it comes about, it will help the marine engineering industry but it will not help a great deal of the ship repairing industry. The more ships we scrap, the fewer repairs will be required on older ships.
      There was a report in the Financial Times yesterday that suggested that, because of a shortage of scrapyards in Europe, many orders may have to go to the Far East. I hope that when the Minister has discussions on scrap-and-build he will keep in mind my comments about the ship repairing industry and the scrapping of ships if ever we see the scheme implemented.
      Mr. Keith Wickenden: First, I declare an interest in shipbuilding. I do so especially as the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon)—but for the hon. Gentleman's speech I should not have contributed to the debate—reierred to a ferry shipbuilding order that went to Germany because it was oversubsidised. That story has been put around for a long time and I am happy
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      to record the true facts. If any hon. Member is interested, I am in a position to support my case with documentary evidence.
      I am chairman of a company called European Ferries Ltd., one of the larger cross-Channel ferry companies. In May 1978 I said in my annual report to my shareholders that later in the year we would be placing a shipbuilding order that might be one of the largest orders placed by any British shipowner in 1978. I said that my board and I hoped that it would be possible to place the order in a British yard.
      We invited 26 yards to tender, treating the 20 British shipbuilders as one yard, and 11 did so, including British Shipbuilders. The lowest tenders came from Japan and Hong Kong. They were ruled out by my technical director on technical grounds. The next lowest tenders came from Denmark and Germany, and were extremely close at about £48 million for the three ships. Of the 11 tenders, British Shipbuilders was eleventh in price at £62 million. We may have been able to live with that, but the most disappointing part of the tender was that whereas we had required two of the ships to be delivered by 30 June 1980—the German yard could deliver one by 31 December 1979 and one by 31 March 1980—British Shipbuilders could not deliver the first until 30 June 1980, and only then, incredible as it may sound, by subcontracting to a Dutch yard.
      Mr. W. E. Garrett: Will the hon Gentleman tell the House whether the Germans delivered the first vessel on time?
      Mr. Wickenden: The first vessel is due for delivery on 31 December 1979. I am assured that it will be delivered on that date. It will certainly be launched on that date.
      I am not seeking to blame British Shipbuilders. It may sound as though I am, but I want to be fair to it. The ships that my company ordered are specialised. Over the years British shipbuilding capacity has concentrated on much larger ships, such as tankers and bulk carriers. These are ships that contain a great deal of steelwork. Hon. Members who know a great deal more than I do about shipbuilding will know

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      that the fitting-out skills that are required in a ship of the passenger liner type are different from those required in a bulk carrier or tanker. Sadly, our skills in that respect have been allowed to decline. I suspect that that is one of the reasons why the German yard was able to deliver so much faster.
      I wish to put the record straight. It has been said widely—I do not know from which source—that there was a massive Government subsidy. I do not believe that to be so. It is my understanding that the reason for the difference in price was that the German yard was able to deliver in half the time, which would, of course, have a bearing on the cost of production.
      It has been said that the German yard went bankrupt immediately afterwards. That, too, is not true. The confusion arose because, as a condition of the contract, my company had insisted, for obvious reasons, on sterling finance. That would not be a risk that any commercial shipyard would be able to take, even if it were large enough to do so. Therefore, the commercial risk was taken by the Bremen state government, who had to pass the necessary legislation to enable them to take the risk. That is how the myth of the yard's having gone bankrupt came about. It did not go bankrupt. It is in a surprisingly thriving state.
      Mr. Dixon: What I said was written in the financial section of The Guardian of 4 July.
      Mr. Wiekenden: Yes. I am not suggesting that the hon. Gentleman is saying anything that he does not believe to be true. However, I am happy to put the record right. The Guardian was wrong. It was delivery dates that caused my company to place an order, sadly, outside the United Kingdom. Difficulties about delivery dates are at the root of the troubles of the shipbuilding industry and most of our industry generally.
      Mr. John Evans: The hon. Gentleman had a vested interest as he was chairman of the company placing the order. Did he investigate whether there was a subsidy coming from the German Government to allow him to have his ship at £48 million as opposed to the price that British Shipbuilders was quoting?
      Mr. Wickenden: It was £48 million against £62 million. One can only ask questions. Obviously one cannot go into the depths of what is taking place behind the scenes in Germany. I am assured by those who know the German political and legislative scene more than I do that if there had been a subsidy it would have been necessary for a state law to be passed by the Bremen state government, as there was for the sterling interest factor. I am assured by the chairman of the yard concerned, for what it is worth, that there was no such subsidy.
      Mr. Evans: He would give that assurance, would not he?
      Mr. Wickenden: I am not so sure. The financial quotation from British Shipbuilders was well outside OECD terms. We, too, do not always strictly abide by the rules.
      Delivery dates are the crux of the matter in industry generally. If, on both sides of industry, we can improve our methods and techniques so that we regard a delivery date as inviolate, we shall start to win back contracts that are now going elsewhere.
      Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the German Government subsidise the German steel industry by means of a coking subsidy, which is an indirect subsidy to all the industries that use steel? As ships are produced in steel, it is clear that there is a subsidy. If we were to investigate other areas we would probably find that the Germans were effectively subsidising all parts of their industry that have a direct bearing on production of shipping.
      Mr. Wickenden: In many respects that is a fair comment. I am delighted to say that the steel for the order that I am talking about was supplied by the British Steel Corporation. The hon. Gentleman has made a valid comment, but it does not apply to the order placed by my company. It is fair to say that throughout the world there are hidden subsidies, as there are in Britain.
      Mr. Campbell-Savours: When the hon. Gentleman, as chairman of his company, was informed by British Shipbuilders that it could not provide the ships by a certain date, did he seek to find out why? Did he seek to examine the reasons why it

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      had made that decision? Did he not protest and stress the need for production to take place within the British economy? If he did so, what was the response?
      Mr. Wickenden: Yes, my company made inquiries. My technical director, who deals with these matters almost excusively, had lengthy meetings with British Shipbuilders. My company wanted the order to go to a British yard if possible. Mr. Michael Casey, the chief executive of British Shipbuilders, advanced a reason to which I have already referred—namely, that the British shipbuilding industry has lost or allowed its fitting-out skills for the passenger liner type of ship to drift away. This is a type of ship that requires a great deal of fitting out. We have not built a significant passenger line-style ship for many years. Skills, I am sad to say, have drifted away.
      8 pm
      Another reason given was that British Shipbuilders was not proposing to build three ships in one yard. That was a dreadful mistake. It meant that a learning curve would be required in respect of each of the ships at each of three different yards. It also meant the second and third ships would probably not have been very satisfactory. When one builds a new type of ship with new technology—these were ships containing a considerable amount of new technology—in a series, the first is likely to be a bad ship, rather as the first car in a production line is more likely to have bugs in the system than is a later one. This order was for a series of three ships, possibly extending to seven later.
      Although that was another reason, apparently, for delay in delivery, the primary reason was that skills had dirfted away. That is not a situation for which British Shipbuilders can be blamed. It has been in control of the situation for only a relatively short time.
      Mr. Donald Dewar: The speech of the hon. Member for Dorking (Mr. Wickenden) goes to the heart of the problems that afflict the shipbuilding industry. It is depressing for management, the work force and the nation if a company—I accept that it was acting in good will—
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      wished to place an order in Britain but was unable to do so. Germany is a high wage economy, a country comparable to ours in many ways. If the case set out by the hon. Member for Dorking shows what is happening, the situation is extremely depressing and distressing. I hope that Ministers and British Shipbuilders will try very hard to discover what went wrong. I should be fascinated to see the carcase of this failure dissected in an attempt to discover why we were so badly undercut. I have some sympathy wih the view that there must be some hidden subsidy. The German steel industry is an obvious competitor for such a subsidy. But the price differentials mentioned by the hon. Member for Dorking are startling and give no cause for comfort.
      In clause 1, we are happily voting, or allowing, the borrowing requirements of British Shipbuilders to be increased. None of us objects to that in principle. In practice, there is no point in having wide borrowing requirements if the finance is not put to good use and we are incapable of attracting work. Without the work, the size of the borrowing requirement will not matter. At the end of the day, it will be money down the sink, if it is ever drawn. We will have a catastrophic situation in our industry. I do not object in principle to clause 1. What worries me is the practice. Hon. Members on these Benches would like to see more intervention and public support for the industry. The industry faces apalling difficulties although there are some signs, despite the case study to which the hon. Member for Dorking referred, that productivity has improved. There has been retooling to create modern yards and there are signs, according to the City pages, that freight rates and tanker rates, particularly the smaller end of the range, have recovered. There has already been a substantial drop in the amount of mothball tonnage. One hopes that more orders will soon be coming along for which British Shipbuilders can compete. Given that situation, we are happy that British Shipbuilders should have the finance to compete for those orders. It is not a case of saying, although we would like more, that we do not wish to accept the half loaf that the Government are offering. That would be a short-sighted policy.

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      In principle, we will give a fair wind to clause 1. It is easy to say that the borrowing requirement should be shoved up from £300 million to £600 million. That can be done. But if there is no sign of support from the Government of the kind that British Shipbuilders needs to get through this difficult period, all the efforts of this legislature and this Bill when enacted will have been in vain. The Government are telling British Shipbuilders that it has to be self-sufficient in two years. By putting this tight corset, if I may use a fashionable word, around British Shipbuilders, we are causing a great deal of dislocation and dismay in the shipbuilding industry. It seems that we are forcing British Shipbuilders to take actions which are so severe that they will be almost counter-productive in terms of the health of the industry and its long-term future at which the Government and the country should be aiming.
      The hon. Member for Dorking said that Mr. Michael Casey had said that one of the reasons was that the industry had largely lost its skills. If the shipbuilding industry is further run down, chasing extremely tight and draconian financial targets, we may destroy not only those skills a lack of which led to the loss of this specialist order but our skills right across the range of merchant shipbuilding. That would be an absolute catastrophe.
      Many hon. Members made the point in the debate on 1 November that it is not the British shipbuilding industry that has contributed to the vast over-capacity that the industry now faces. If we were to contract from our present point in the same proportion as the Japanese, or some of the mushrooming industries, might have to contract, we would be left with a base industry so small, having opted out of the skills that we need, that we would not be able to benefit from a recovery in the industry. That is one of the basic problems.
      I am a Clydeside Member. I represent a constituency with big and substantial shipbuilding industries. It is not a traditional shipbuilding constituency in the sense that it is all a memory. It is a shipbuilding constituency at the moment. My constituents are heavily involved in and dependent upon the shipbuilding industry. I have no doubt that they would want me to give a blessing to clause 1 and to a raising of the borrowing requirement.
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      They would also want me to say that there is a crisis of morale in the shipbuilding industry, certainly on Clydeside, that is now reaching worrying proportions.
      I do not wish to be alarmist. I want, however, to lay down my marker. We are reaching a point where the whole credibility of the corporate plan is being called in question on Clydeside in a very fundamental way. We have the two yards, Govan itself and Scotstoun Marine, which are in a state almost of dislocation. About 1,300 to 1,400 people who work in the steel trades in Govan are standing around doing nothing. One factor that will clearly destroy skill and productivity, and devastate morale, is people standing around doing nothing with no certainty that any work will come forward. That tragic situation is occurring in the Govan yard.
      At the other end of Govan Shipbuilders, about 1,100 to 1,200 men at Scotstoun Marine know that the yard is going on to a care and maintenance basis. The men have no idea what is to happen to them or to the yard once it is on a care and maintenance basis. This situation is perhaps due to the hurried way in which decisions have been taken and the tight limits that the Government are imposing despite the borrowing requirement contained in clause 1. It is understood that the yard will go to Yarrow's, an extremely efficient and flourishing naval shipbuilders in my constituency. It is not clear what Yarrow's will be able to do with it or whether it will ever have a potential use for it. In the short term, I understand, Yarrow's is not likely to have a use for it. The men are being invited to volunteer for redundancy. But, given the devastating situation in the employment market, very few are volunteering at this stage. The men understand that there are to be no compulsory redundancies. A hopeless impasse has therefore arisen in which no one knows what the future holds.
      On 1 November I said that there was a particular and substantial worry in Govan shipbuilders about future ordering. I raised that as forcibly as I could. I received a reply from the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Fletcher), who stood in during that shipbuilding debate. He agreed that it was perfectly

      1425
      true that there would be two orders for 26,000 tonnes deadweight Cardiff class carriers coming to the Govan shipyards. He accepted that this had been included in the package when the corporate plan was unveiled, and that a letter of intent had been signed. He added that the letter of intent had not yet become a firm order. He said:
      "It is not unusual for a considerable period to elapse between a letter of intent and a contract".
      He went on to say:
      "A letter can take six months or more before it becomes a firm order".—[Official Report, 1 November 1979; Vol. 972, c. 1575.]
      That is not unusual in the industry, and it certainly applies in this case. I do not want to be critical of the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, who is not in his place. I notice that he has just emerged through a trapdoor. In no way do I wish to be critical, but my colleagues on Clydeside, and the representatives of the work force, took his words as being a little casual and perhaps dismissive. I accept that that may be a false impression, because I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman is alarmed and worried about the situation.
      I met the local confederation the very next day. It is very worried about morale in the yards and about keeping control in the yards when there is absolutely no hard prospect of work coming in to take up the slack. It will not be news to the hon. Gentleman to learn that there will be a meeting of the shipbuilding negotiating committee of the confederation on Monday of next week. Immediately afterwards, it hopes to meet top British Shipbuilders executives to discuss the Govan situation.
      I accept that British Shipbuilders would very much like to deliver these orders, but if we find that those orders are not delivered, and unless we can get some clear commitment from the Government about work in the yards, it will be very difficult indeed to continue in the sort of limbo in which the men of skill are now placed.
      I appeal to the Government to show some indication that they will take a less non-interventionist approach to the problems of Govan and many other yards in the country. As I have said before, there is a danger that they will be seen to be
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      doing a Pontius Pilate act and washing their hands on the sidelines. However, when a man's job and traditional skills are at risk in a yard where he has worked all his life, there is very little comfort in having a Government who say "We cannot intervene. We must leave it to British Shipbuilders, which has been told that it has got to take the kind of measures that will eliminate all financial debit within a two-year period."
      We all welcome the higher borrowing requirement. But let me yet again appeal to the Minister to do something to reassure an industry that is now facing an extremely serious situation and cannot be left hanging as it is at present I recognise that it may be impossible to say anything now. Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that, but I hope that my warning about the consequences of further inaction and no news coming forward for the men on Clydeside will be taken very much to heart and that Ministers will try to act in the near future, given a situation that is becoming intolerable. Because it is intolerable, action with regard to sanctions may be taken by the men which would be in no one's interest, but they may be driven to such action by the total lack of news and encouragement from the Government.
      It would be a tragedy if we were to end up in that situation in default. Once we reached that situation, it might be very difficult indeed to undo the damage. I therefore appeal to Ministers to look seriously at the effect of their policies, and at their strict financial approach to the affairs of British Shipbuilders, given the tragedy in human and economic terms in areas such as mine.
      Dr. David Clark: I hope that the Minister will agree that the tenor of the debate has been moderate and positive. That is the way in which Labour Members have tried to approach the Bill. We recognise that the Government have undertaken a difficult task. We take them at their word when they say that they want a viable and competitive shipbuilding industry.
      In essence, we are now talking about the borrowing requirement of the shipbuilding industry. We should like reassurance from the Minister on a number of points before deciding whether we

      1427
      shall divide the Committee. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us on these points, which stem from the question whether the amount of the borrowing requirement will be enough.
      8.15 pm
      In one way the hon. Member for Dorking (Mr. Wickenden) and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said more or less the same thing. The hon. Member for Dorking said that British workmen have lost their skill in building this type of ship. My hon. Friend the Member for Garscadden talked about morale. I am sure that all hon. Members would agree that they aye one arm the same thing. They are one and the same reflection of a phenomenon, because we are talking about particular areas of the country that have a number of physical things in common, such as rivers and seas.
      They have another thing in common. They suffer from incredibly high unemployment. My hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon) said that male unemployment in his constituency was 16 per cent. My constituency is immediately next door, and it has an even higher rate of unemployment. I make that point because we are talking about areas of incredibly high unemployment. Therefore, in a situation in which men are worried about their futures, and when they see uncertainty, their morale and everything associated with it is bound to suffer.
      The hon. Member for Dorking was honest and frank when he said that we cannot blame British Shipbuilders. We inherited this problem from the past. But it is no use looking to the past, we must build for the future. In doing so we must recognise the difficulties. We must appreciate that the two-year time scale about which the Government are talking should not be a deadline. I hope that it is not a sort of guillotine that is hovering above British Shipbuilders. If it is seen in that way, it will affect the morale and skill of the work force even more.
      Having said that, it is worth while paying tribute to a certain number of workers in British Shipbuilders. I think especially of the Tyne Ship Repair Group, where, as the Minister knows, the men gave a commitment not to strike. They
      1428
      kept to that. They deserve every credit for doing so, and I am glad to see the Minister concur.
      In talking about the borrowing requirement, we should also think about the future of British Shipbuilders in the immediate years. That future is inevitably entangled with the policy, or non-policy, within the Common Market. That brings me back to the scrap-and-build policy. As the Minister knows, I raised this matter on 1 November and I received an answer from him yesterday. I should still like a little more commitment.
      The Minister says that he is committed to the scrap-and-build policy. I should like to know whether there is any money behind it. It is easy to say "We think that this is a good idea", but may we have an assurance that, if an agreement is reached within the EEC, money will come forward from the Government to support the scheme? If the EEC scheme does not come forward, will the Minister seek power from the EEC to bring in our own scrap-and-build programme? I understand that the document to be presented to the Council of Ministers contains a number of policies—first, those funded by individual Governments; secondly, those funded by the Community; and, thirdly, a kind of partnership. I understand that the Commission has a preference for one of those options in particular but that it is for individual Governments, quite rightly, to use their sovereign right to decide which one they should follow. Will the Minister tell us, one way or another, whether there will be money to help the scrap-and-build programme of British Shipbuilders? It would be most helpful if he could give us that undertaking.
      The Minister of State, Department of Industry (Mr. Adam Butler): I have probably expressed more support for the scrap-and-build scheme than any other Minister from the member States. Surely it goes without saying that if in principle I support a scheme that involves finance, I must be supporting the input of funds. The hon. Gentleman is correct. We hope that this measure will come before the Council of Ministers next week—and, of course, I shall be in there fighting.
      Dr. Clark: I am reassured by that statement, and I publicly acknowledge the enthusiasm of the Minister. But the Opposition have a right to be sceptical,

      1429
      because they know that this Government are very keen to cut back money supply. I hope that the Minister will fight very hard within the EEC for the scheme to be brought forward.
      When we are dealing with the borrowing requirements of British Shipbuilders, as we are under this clause, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden said, it is no use having the money unless we can do something with it. I come back to the point on which we keep probing the Government and on which we are still not satisfied—public service orders. It is known that the previous Government carried out a survey of the public service to see whether there were any potential orders. I do not know what the outcome was, but I understand that there were certain discussions about hydrographic vessels. What has happened about those? Are we to get any orders from this area?
      What about British Shipbuilders using its money, possibly under the borrowing requirements, to build ships not necessarily "on spec" but for lease? I have specifically in mind liaison between, for example, the British Steel Corporation and British Shipbuilders. As the Minister knows, the factor that brought this to my mind was that when British Steel, a nationalised body owned by the people, wanted to lease a ship it leased a Scandinavian-built one from Ladbroke's, a private organisation.
      Could there not be more co-ordination and advance liaison about the requirements of various publicly owned industries with British Shipbuilders to try to bring things together?
      On the question of finance, I draw the attention of the Minister to a problem that I face at present and on which I should like his help. What amount of money may British Shipbuilders borrow? On 1st November, I mentioned that Peter Johnston, a firm in my constituency, had gone into liquidation, with the loss of about 300 jobs. The company had been primarily involved in fitting out ships.
      Though it is bad enough for men to lose their jobs, the real problem is that 37 apprentices also lost their jobs. I am sure that the Minister and the House will agree, as they did on 1 November, that we must de everything in our power
      1430
      to try to retain the skill of our people. Nowhere is that more true, and nowhere is there a greater danger of disillusionment, than among young people.
      I ask the Minister to intervene with the shipbuilding industry training board. An approach was made to it yesterday by a group of people in the constituency, including North of England engineering employers, the various unions, the employment services and the South Shields marine and technical college. It would be a great help if the Minister could advise us on that matter.
      Will the Minister make any further comments about the amount of subsidies available to the shipbuilding industry, even within the EEC? I know that Ministers of all Governments say "We play by the rules. As far as we can judge, the other side also plays by the rules." Unfortunately, some of us are beginning to doubt that. I was very impressed by the paper produced by John Parker, in which he listed the aids given to their shipbuilding industries by our European competitors. Has the Minister any more thoughts on the terms and conditions, and is he satisfied that those in Britain are adequate?
      I remind the Minister of a point that I made previously. 1 am glad to hear that he will go to the Council of Ministers meetings to fight for the British shipbuilding industry, but recently one of his Cabinet colleagues, when asked what the Common Market had achieved, said that it had stopped France going Communist. What he really meant was that the Common Market had saved the traditional industry of France, which is agriculture. That is more important than sheep—I hope that that is not too emotive—cows and turnips. In France, agriculture is an economic sub-culture which has kept many people on the land and has brought prosperity to many areas that would have been severely depressed
      I suggest that my analogy is not far wrong, because the shipbuilding industry not only builds ships but provides many related jobs. For every job in the shipbuilding yards there are three or four outside. There is a sub-economy in shipbuilding areas that is vital to maintain the employment level.
      When the Minister begins to barter and bargain at the Council of Ministers

      1431
      I hope that he will not concede the point that there will be an equal slimming down of all industries within the EEC. It must be borne in mind that, just as agriculture is important to France, the shipbuilding industry is a traditional part of our culture. We cannot concede to the EEC that it must be cut down to the same level as in smaller nations.
      Mr. John Evans: I am proud to take part in this debate with my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon). Like him, I was born and bred in that town. I do not believe that either of us, when we were respectively union chairman and secretary at one of the major Tyneside shipyards in the 1960s, thought we would see the day when we would be discussing the problems of the shipbuilding industry in the House of Commons. However, time flies and it is interesting to note that we are both shipyard workers who left school at 14 and spent most of our working lives in the industry.
      My hon. Friend gave a graphic description of the problems and conditions which shipbuilding workers have endured for so long. Part of the problem is that those who work and suffer—in many cases seeing fellow workers die—in the industry have long and bitter memories. There are deep-seated problems in the industry.
      We welcome the Bill, for what it is worth. However, one of the problems facing the Government is the question of credibility—whether the workers in the industry or even the public feel that there is a true, meaningful commitment by the present Government to the British shipbuilding, ship repairing and marine engineering industries. The three industries are linked.
      Although ships are not now built in my constituency, one of the largest factories there, the GEC Vulcan works at Newton-le-Willows, is a very large supplier of small diesel engines to the British shipping industry. That industry, like shipbuilding, is flat on its back at present. Considerable numbers of my constituents are facing redundancy because of lack of orders flowing from the shipping industry.
      8.30 pm
      I am not at all surprised that the Conservative Benches are empty, apart from the Government Front Bench. There is always very little interest on the part
      1432
      of Conservative Members in the problems of this industry. I am particularly sad that the hon. Member for Dorking (Mr. Wickenden) has left the Chamber. He made some very important points which deserve some answers. I think that we all recognise that the hon. Member was not attacking British Shipbuilders—indeed, he spoke in sad terms—but in cold print it will read as an attack upon British Shipbuilders. He referred particularly to three issues which concerned him, as the chairman of a major shipping company, in placing his orders in foreign yards and not British yards—price, delivery dates and lack of skills.
      On the price issue, we should need a great deal of evidence and knowledge of what went on at the time of the order before we could pass judgment. From my experience in the House of Commons and my experience of three years in the European Parliament, I suspect that a very large subsidy was paid by the German authorities for the building of those ships. That may be disputed. We would need to see the evidence.
      What concerns me was the hon. Member's concentration upon delivery dates. In this respect I feel that he may know a great deal about shipping but little about shipbuilding. One of the things we would all need to know on the question of the delivery date is whether British Shipbuilders had a berth available on which to put the ship. After all, one could hardly take a skeleton of a ship off a berth to put one of the hon. Member's ships on it. We would need to know a great deal more about the position before simply putting it on the record that British Shipbuilders was late in delivering, like every other British industry. We would need to know what would have been the starting date of the ship, and the completion time. That evidence was not given to us.
      The other point which is of fundamental importance in the debate on this clause, which is concerned with the future of British shipbuilding, is the loss of skills. I refute the hon. Gentleman's argument that we are losing skills in the building of liners. I think that all hon. Members who have any knowledge of shipbuilding know that no one is ordering liners any more. Most people now travel in aeroplanes. Only a few liners are involved in cruising.
      Dr. John CunninghamTo be fair to the hon. Member for Dorking (Mr. Wickenden), I think that he almost made the matter clear, although perhaps to get it on record, as my hon. Friend rightly says, it is important to make it plain that the hon. Member was referring to orders placed in 1978, and he said that British Shipbuilders at that time did not have the skills. If that is so, as British Shipbuilders took over only in 1977, it must be made abundantly clear that the loss of skills, if it occurred, occurred under private enterprise and not under public ownership.
      Mr. Evans: My hon. Friend has anticipated one of the points I wanted to make. One of the serious problems that will face what is left of the industry of the future will be the lack of skills which will be brought about by a lack of apprentices being taken into the industry. Nevertheless, I reject the argument that British Shipbuilders is losing any skills whatever. Today British Shipbuilders workers are building some of the most sophisticated warships which have ever sailed the seas.
      The hon. Member for Dorking referred to fitting out. Although he may not have realised it, there is obviously a difference in fitting out a bulk carrier or a tanker as opposed to a liner or a cross-Channel ferry. Nevertheless, in fitting out those ships certain skills are involved which apply to all ships. It is important for that to be put on the record, because I should not like people reading the report of the debate in Hansard to think that we on the Labour Benches were prepared to listen silently to even a well-meant attack on British Shipbuilders on the two issues of delivery dates and skills. In this industry we have all the skills necessary. If the industry received substantial backing from the Government in financial terms and planning terms, we could assure the world that we could build anything that the world requires.
      Given the lack of capital investment in private industry, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow, British Shipbuilders has a proud record on delivery dates. In the four years following the setting up of the Swan Hunter consortium on Tyneside, every single delivery date was met.
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      On 1 November, the Minister said that he hoped that hon. Members would not press him on borrowing requirement limits, but we are entitled to know what commitment over what period the Government have in mind for the industry. Yesterday there was an article in the Financial Times on the scrap-and-build policy, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) covered much of that aspect. The Financial Times has a proud record of leaks from Government Departments which invariably turn out to be correct—and I am not talking of just this Government. The article says:
      "The UK Government believes the scheme would be worthwhile if it was introduced quickly, before the expected upturn begins, and if it was organised on a national basis."
      We are fascinated to know when the Government believe that that upturn will occur. I can see nothing on the horizon to indicate any upturn in world trade.
      Most of the industry's problems result from the cataclysmic downturn in world trade over the past few years. If there was an upsurge and ships were in demand, I suspect that we should not be discussing the Bill. We are discussing the future of British shipbuilding in the context of a recession that is probably the worst since the 1930s.
      I hope that the Government recognise the absolute necessity of retaining the British shipbuilding industry. We want not merely a shell but an industry that can cater for Britain's future requirements. Although we are members of the EEC—and some of us do not welcome that—we are an island and a trading nation. When world trade improves, we shall doubtless again supply ships to the world if we have a shipbuilding industry left.
      I hope that the Government will give a clear undertaking to support the British shipbuilding industry during the few difficult years. Other countries are subsidising their industries, and ours should not be left to stand on its own feet to face competition that is patently unfair and in many cases discriminatory. The Government must have a long-term commitment to the industry.
      It is not merely the shipbuilding industry on Tyneside, Clydeside, Merseyside or elsewhere that is affected. Other

      1435
      industries in other parts of the country are closely tied to shipbuilding. The shipbuilding and ship repairing industries are synonymous. They employ large numbers of people and their decline would also have an impact on other industries throughout the country. The shipyard provides only 30 per cent. of the components of a ship and 70 per cent. comes from other industries which are therefore dependent on a prosperous shipbuilding industry. They need the base of those orders to ensure that they produce the goods for domestic needs and for export. It is important to recognise that we are not discussing shipbuilding purely in terms of Tyneside, Clydeside or any of the other great yards. This industry is not only a major strategic industry but it is also one that has an impact throughout the country.
      Mr. Dixon: Does my hon. Friend also agree that one of the biggest customers of British Steel, which is now in such a perilous position, is British Shipbuilders?
      Mr. Evans: That is obviously an important point. One of the great problems facing the steel industry is the downturn in orders, particularly in the shipbuilding industry, as a vast amount of steel is used in the production of a ship. This endorses the point that I have been trying to make about not looking at shipbuilding in isolation. It is a major and key strategic industry and its prosperity has repercussions far beyond its areas.
      I hope that the Minister will cover these points when he replies to the debate. I hope that the Government will recognise that the industry is looking for a long-term commitment from them. The industry has heard enough about lame ducks being slaughtered and profitability being the essence. The Government and the British people must recognise that this industry cannot be profitable in the short term. A major upturn in world trade is needed before there can be any hope of profitability.
      Mr. Frank Field: I wish to support the Bill, particularly clause 1. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) put his finger on an important point when he spoke about the atmosphere and morale in the yards. The atmosphere and morale in Cammell Laird is much the same as that in other yards. It is very much
      1436
      affected by statements from the Government Front Bench. I am sure that Cammell Laird people will carefully comb the pages of Hansard tomorrow to see whether the Government are prepared to be more forthcoming than they have been in the past.
      I visited Cammell Laird very soon after the Minister of State paid his summer visit to the yard. I was struck by the fact that both management and men were united in their comments about the qualities of the Minister. They felt that it was a welcome change to have someone who was prepared to listen, but they both went on to say that they wished he would begin to give them answers to some of their questions. I cannot help but recall those comments when I think that this is the third or fourth time that we have tried to probe the Government's thinking on the substance of the initial policy statement by the Minister of State on the shipbuilding industry.
      Like many other Members on this side of the Committee, I realise that Cammell Laird faces particular problems brought about by the decline of the shipbuilding industry in this country. The announcement earlier this week about the Government's plans for Shotton have important implications for Merseyside as a whole and Birkenhead in particular. Some of my constituents work at Shot-ton, and the Birkenhead dock is primarily dependent on bringing ore into Shotton. If Shotton is closed, the Birkenhead dock might also be closed and many people put out of work.
      Birkenhead has two main industries—the port industries and shipbuilding. I hope that when the Minister replies he will say something about the whole series of policies that have been put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven (Dr. Cunningham) on a number of occasions. I hope that this time we will have a reaction from the Government Front Bench.
      8.45 pm
      In particular, I hope that the Minister will comment on two areas which are crucial to the North-West. In correspondence and in the House I have asked the Minister of State what he meant when he said that the Government would try to bring forward public sector orders. I had been a Member for only a few

      1437
      weeks when I realised that one's questions were answered only if the Minister had good news to give. I hope that I am present in the House when the Minister announces the bringing forward of public sector orders, because he will deservedly make the most of it when he has accomplished that task. Let us hope that soon he has good news.
      Like many of my hon. Friends, I fought an election campaign against opponents who said that if a Conservative Government were elected the defence budget would be increased, as it has been, and that such an increase would bring orders to shipyards such as Cammell Laird. I look forward to the time—I hope it is soon, because of the effect on morale in yards on the Clyde and in the North-West—when Ministers can announce the bringing forward of defence orders.
      My third point is one about which I have asked the Minister for details before. For once, I do not expect an answer. I hope that those who work in British shipbuilding will shortly see a change in Government policy. I am sure that the Minister and other right hon. and hon. Members saw the report in yesterday's edition of The Times by Peter Hill on the possible loss of an order worth about £200 million from the Hong Kong-based World-Wide (Shipping) Group. Peter Hill went on to say that Ministers had been made aware of what is now, I suppose, a new phrase which we shall hear frequently in the House, the "attractive soft credits" being offered by our competitors to win orders which might otherwise go to this country.
      The report reaffirmed that the present Government, perhaps like the previous Government, are abiding by the spirit and the letter of the OECD guidelines on competition in this field. Peter Hill emphasised that executives at British Shipbuilders had made it clear to the Government that it was not that we were competing unequally with groups or nations outside the EEC, but that we were now not competing on equal terms with our EEC partners.
      I hope that the Committee will bear with me if I bring up to date the contribution that John Parker of British Ship
      1438
      builders continually makes to our debates. In that report in yesterday's edition of The Times he was reported as saying:
      'The United Kingdom has adhered to the OECD understanding on export credit for ships, but in situations where other countries have not, and do not, it is crucial that British Shipbuilders should have the opportunity to match such terms."
      I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate he will for once have good news for those who work in British shipyards and for those of us who represent them. I hope that he will be able to answer some of our questions on the meaning in practice of the key policy statement which he made some months ago. I do not expect him to comment on whether the Government will change their mind about putting British Shipbuilders on equal terms with our competitors, both within the EEC and outside, when competing for orders. I hope that he will be supported by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee on any quiet directives he gave to British Shipbuilders to go out and win orders on terms equal to those countries which are snatching orders from us now.
      The Minister may be surprised that I do not end, as I usually end my contributions to shipbuilding debates, with a whole string of questions. I hope that Government policies will soon be finalised and that the hon. Gentleman will be able to announce the effects of the increased defence budget on our shipyards and the bringing forward of public sector orders.
      Every hon. Member who has spoken has said how disappointing it is to have an allocation of funds with which the clause deals but of which Government policy at present is making so little use.
      Mr. Ron Brown: The contributions to the debate have confirmed one thing—that shipbuilding is the Aunt Sally of the United Kingdom economy. We know the reason. Basically, the industry has suffered at the hands of private owners. In the good times, they said that they did not need to invest, and when the bad times came they said that they could not afford to invest.
      That could be said of many other aspects of the British economy, but it is particularly true of shipbuilding. It is bad in my constituency, where we have

      1439
      Robb Caledon, the other half of the famous operation on the East Coast of Scotland. The part of that operation in Leith will remain, but we must look at that shipyard. It is called the Victoria shipyard, and is well named, because it is ancient. The yard finds it hard to compete in world markets, because it is not efficient. It is extremely backward, using equipment that should belong to a museum.
      The same story could be told of other parts of the country. The world economic crisis has worsened the position, as we all recognise, but it has been helped along by Government policies, which are intensifying the recession and crisis. In that situation, fewer vessels, not more, are needed. When we are fighting for contracts, we find that there is the old 1930-style strategy of a trade war, which leads to arguments for further closures. That is the problem now.
      I believe that the recently announced closures are only the first round. I must be realistic. I tell my constituents "Your yard has been saved for the time being, but be on the defensive." They are on the defensive, and rightly so.
      The men are willing to co-operate with management. The former owners have gone, but unfortunately there are still the old ideas in management, and those ideas will not be moved. There may be various reasons. Perhaps the present Government have something to do with it. I believe that massive investment should come from the State, and I welcome the Government's measures. They are important for investment, but they are simply a drop in the ocean compared with the magnitude of the problem. Many hon. Members have spoken of the investment in other countries.
      We must look to the future. We must examine the problems of British shipbuilding and wherever possible eradicate them. It would be wrong for anyone in Government or elsewhere to pussyfoot around with the jobs and the future of many families, whether in Scotland or in England. The problems are the same.
      It is interesting that the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson), a representative of the Scottish National Party, has disappeared from the Chamber. I should have thought that he would at least stay to make a contribution on behalf of his constituency.
      1440
      What can we do about the problem? We can argue the case for shipping lines in this country investing in our yards. It is up to the Government to put on the pressure. We should insist that the lines buy British ships. Many ships need replacing. Possibilities exist with the scrap-and-build programme but pressure must be put on the Government. Any measures we can take are limited, but we must not say that the British shipbuilding industry will go to the wall and disappear. Shipbuilding workers are leaving the industry because they feel that it is doomed. It is ironic that some shipyards are looking for skilled workers. The CBI has said that it is difficult to get skilled workers for industry, including the engineering industry. Not enough apprentices are being trained.
      The Government's attitude seems to be in favour of investing overseas. Perhaps industrialists have no faith in this country. No doubt, big business will go for the fast buck and speculate. That will not assist the country or the principle of nationalisation. We all accept that nationalisation is an important step forward. Even Conservatives support it to an extent. Of course, it is not perfect, and when it operates in a capitalist economy it does not operate on behalf of working-class people.
      Talking in Socialist terms, we require the "commanding heights" of the economy—as pointed out by Nye Bevan—to run industry and help shipbuilding. I hope that the next Labour Government will give resources to the industry to modernise the yards. We must commit ourselves to that proposal and state it to the industry and its trade unionists. In that way we shall win their confidence. The electorate at large has little confidence in the Government's administration but at least we can state our commitment.
      Mr. Ernie Ross: I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. On 1 November the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland did not clear up several matters. I should like to raise those today. I associate myself with the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Brown) when he regretted the absence of the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson). I find it strange that at this vital Committee stage on the Shipbuilding Bill the hon. Member for Dundee, East,

      1441
      who is an honest and sincere man, should not find it necessary to be in the Chamber. We find ourselves in this position because of the actions of the hon. Member for Dundee, East and his colleagues. On 3 May some of his electorate were rewarded for their support by joining the unemployment register. It is sad that he is not here tonight, because I am sure that he would have made a valuable contribution.
      I hope that the Minister has seen a copy of that new newspaper, the Dundee Standard. It contains a full page of photographs outlining some of the problems faced by the workers in the yard. I served my apprenticeship there 19 or 20 years ago. The pictures were familiar to me but it was unacceptable that, 20 years later, the platers who bring the plates from the yard to the ship are using the same broken-down, dilapidated barrow that was in use when I was an apprentice. That is the answer to the hon. Member for Surrey, North-West (Mr. Grylls) who tried, on Second Reading, to make play of the supposed losses incurred by Robb Caledon. The hon. Member for Dundee, East and I answered the hon. Gentleman on that point.
      9 pm
      Discussions are taking place in the joint working group on the Dundee yard and other yards, including Leith, where the situation is slightly worse than that at Robb Caledon. The majority of yards could do with more subsidy. The problem is that the sums contained in the Bill are not as large as we would like.
      On Second Reading, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland did not satisfy my hon. Friends and myself in relation to the two-year period. I quoted from the Cambridge economic forecast which states clearly that there will be a fall of 9 per cent. in shipbuilding demand this year and a further 7 per cent. fall in 1980–81. Labour Members have a right to press the Government to ensure that workers in the yards are convinced that there is not an exact time limit within the two-year period.
      Despite the Government statements, reported in the Financial Times on Monday, it would be helpful to those in the industry if we could know which scheme the Government intend to pursue for
      1442
      the scrap-and-build programme. It would be relevant for the Minister to answer that point tonight.
      In Dundee a joint working party has been set up between British Shipbuilders, the shipbuilding negotiating committee, shop stewards and the local community. It may not be appropriate for the Government to make a statement on discussions that are taking place, but I am confident that the group's report will make nonsense of the comments of the hon. Member for Surrey, North-West on Second Reading.
      I have knowledge of the agreements in the Dundee yard and I am confident that the working party will confirm that the agreements made between the finishing trades, the general workers and the boilermakers are such that if they had been used properly by the management, some of the problems facing Robb Caledon would not exist. It is important to note that British Shipbuilders has made significant changes in its top personnel in that yard. I hope that those points are taken into account in any deliberations that take place.
      I am also confident that the working party will acknowledge that many of the competitive yards in British Shipbuilders do not have the agreements that exist in Robb Caledon and that the lesson is that those yards could be even more competitive if they had such agreements. I hope that in these discussions there will be consideration of the idea that has been floated of having a synchro lift installed in the Dundee yard. The workers in the yard and I, and anyone with any knowledge of shipbuilding, fail to understand where the local district council got the idea that somehow if the synchro lift was introduced 2,000 jobs would be created in ship repairing. It stretches one's imagination to work out where one could employ 2,000 people in ship repairing anywhere in this country. That number of additional jobs is just not on.
      If the study group concludes that Robb Caledon should have a synchro lift, I hope that there will be no problem with the funding. Some of the sums of money that have been mentioned are quite considerable. There has been talk of £6 million, and I hope that the Government will not prevent British Shipbuilders from getting the necessary funds to ensure

      1443
      that the project goes ahead if it is found to be viable.
      The primary aim of the workers in the Robb Caledon yard is to retain shipbuilding there. The comments of the Under-Secretary on Second Reading demonstrated the need to retain shipbuilding at the Dundee yard. He suggested that one of the features that could be used under the Blackpool agreement was inter-yard transfers. I am sure that he realises that to apply that scheme to Dundee would mean moving workers and their families 60 miles to the next nearest yard. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leith said, that is not the most modern and up-to-date of yards. I doubt whether it could absorb workers from other yards, and anyway the problem of moving workers and their families from Dundee would make transfers unacceptable.
      I hope that the Minister's reference to a sensible plan for recruitment is not meant to infer that apprentices will not be taken on. If we are to have a viable industry in the 1980s and beyond, we must continue to recruit apprentices, both in manual trades and for the design staff. If we do not train young people in the design skills, we shall never be able to compete with foreign yards. In particular, I should like to see the skills in the Robb Caledon design office retained. I hope that the Minister will indicate tonight that there is no intention of downgrading or eliminating the yard's design capability.
      The workers in Dundee hope that the Government will be prepared to review the borrowing limits favourably and seriously if the upturn in demand is as certain as the Cambridge economic review has suggested. We hope that this is only the first stage of a commitment that in the 1980s and 1990s we shall have a viable shipbuilding industry.
      The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Michael Marshall): The debate has ranged very widely. I make no complaint about that. However, it presents me with some difficulties, as to answer all the questions raised would take me well beyond the rules of order as they apply to a narrowly drawn clause.
      We are discussing the doubling of the borrowing powers of British Shipbuilders.
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      The hon. Member for Whitehaven (Dr. Cunningham) summarised the key questions relating to that aspect, and there was a helpful and constructive debate. I recognise the sincerity and deep interest shown by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. The Government want to respond. Although, in the ambit of this debate, it is difficult to consider all the matters raised, we take on board many of the points made.
      Perhaps the hon. Members for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Brown) and Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) were attempting to hot things up towards the end of this part of our debate. I remind there that we must consider another clause and the Third Reading, and I hope that we may return to some of the broader issues later.
      The way in which the debate ranged reinforced many points that were raised on Second Reading. I shall try to pull together into five main areas the points raised by hon. Members on both sides. The debate highlighted the fact that the borrowing powers must be seen within a broader context. Frankly, I wish that we could answer some of the key questions that were raised. The question that dominates the minds of all Members of Parliament is this: to what extent can we predict the upturn in this market?
      I was heartened to hear the hon. Member for Wallsend (Mr. Garrett) say that things were looking more optimistic in his part of the world. However, this is a difficult problem, whatever the mechanism we seek to balance the borrowing powers, including the intervention fund, and on whatever basis we seek to help this great industry. The trade unions have shown that by their acceptance of the proposals put to them by British Shipbuilders. We recognise that this will be a difficult, uphill task over many years.
      Within the five broad areas, I refer first to the intervention fund. The detail was spelt out pretty well on Second Reading. We now have a two-year agreement, which will help us to move ahead with rather more certainty. Part of the importance of the intervention fund and its retention brings me back to a question raised by a number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Newton (Mr. Evans). It is natural for us all to distrust other areas and the subsidising of their industries.

      1445
      This industry, almost more than any other, is one in respect of which our membership of the Community has been of great value. In setting the limits for the intervention fund—indeed, in looking at policies on scrap-and-build and many other questions—we have an opportunity to test and evaluate the sincerity and determination of other countries to play by the rules. The Government would want to move quickly, upon any evidence of unfair competition from hon. Members on either side. I urge all hon. Members, with their experience and constituency contacts, to help us if they feel that there is such evidence. The intervention fund is a key in that sense.
      I now refer to the scrap-and-build scheme. My hon. Friend the Minister of State is grateful for the expressions of good will and support as he goes to discuss the matter with the Council of Ministers on 20 November. The House will understand why, in this delicate negotiating position, this is neither the time nor the place to declare the Government's hand in detail. We are looking for a cost-effective scheme. My hon. Friend has been well to the fore and, many would admit, pre-eminent in urging this cause. I know that he appreciates, as do all Government supporters, the way in which the Opposition gave help and support in that endeavour.
      Looking at the wider context within which clause 1 has been viewed tonight, all hon. Members recognise that a credit race to replace the intervention fund race, or any other part of the shipbuilding war, will not help anybody. That is why there is common agreement that we should maintain the OECD limits on credit.
      9.15 pm
      Productivity, the fifth key element, has played a large part in the debate. Many of us were grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking (Mr. Wickenden), who was not able to stay for the whole of the debate and who was particularly anxious to hear the speech by the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon). My hon. Friend always gives a courteous and careful hearing to anyone who is an expert in his field and it was helpful to hear the views of someone who has to make purchasing decisions.
      1446
      The key question on productivity is how we assess whether our industry is moving towards greater productivity. The trade unions have shown some recognition that all is not well. The hon. Member for Newton gave us some helpful advice about the technical assessment that would be necessary to establish fairly what is a late delivery. He also discussed the problem of start-up time. I think, however, that he would be the first to recognise that with a thin order book one might expect to find berths more easily than at other times.
      Mr. John Evans: It does not necessarily follow that an empty berth, which might be suitable for building a VLCC, woud be ideal for building a cross-Channel ferry. It is not just a question of empty berths. The important point to recognise is that the available berth should be suitable for the ship required.
      Mr. Marshall: The point is well made. However, I think that the hon. Gentleman will accept that, at a time when there is greater spare capacity, necessary adaptation and change is more feasible than at other times. The point about market opportunity that has been made in the debate is one that many in British Shipbuilders will no doubt take on board.
      The delivery differential in the contract for the Esso support vessel which went to Finland—when so many competing firms were quoting a two-year delivery date against our three years—demonstrates that productivity is not an idle concept. Many hon. Members, with their experience of the industry, appreciate that this is a key issue and that it is part of the basis on which the trade unions and management of British Shipbuilders are striving to make the industry competitive in probably the most internationally competitive manufacturing game in the world.
      The hon. Member for Wallsend was a little more optimistic, and I hope that that optimism reflects market trends. We must not get too excited at the prospect of a few more orders this year than last year for British Shipbuilders, because orders are still well below capacity. When talking to ship owners I find a remarkable degree of unanimity among them about the age of their fleets. They tend to say that their vessels are modern. The passenger liner industry, in which

      1447
      Clydeside made its name famous all over the world, is declining. More people are flying and so the liner market becomes increasingly limited. The hon. Member for Jarrow, with his trade union experience, was perhaps led astray when he referred to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland as being sarcastic. I am sure that if he re-reads column 1576 of the Official Report he will find that my hon. Friend was welcoming his contribution.
      My hon. Friend made a valid point about scrap-and-build and the way in which that may be extended to ship repairing. The Government will consider it.
      The contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking was followed by a speech by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar). There was a degree of common ground. The industry is declining and there is a fear that the skills will slip away. There is evidence that some of the most able workers are leaving the industry.
      Hon. Members have sought assurances that the Government are doing all that they can to deal with their anxieties. The Government understand the problems. Nobody would wish to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that we are doing anything but pursuing with the utmost vigour the opportunities to help this great industry. That applies to public purchasing and wherever there are opportunities to assist.
      It is difficult to make off-the-cuff pronouncements in the midst of the negotiations within the Community and when we are reviewing the number of issues, including hydrographic vessels.
      The hon. Member for Whitehaven described accurately the basis upon which the clause provides for the borrowing powers to be doubled in two tranches. The first tranche involves £500 million, with provision for a further increase, subject to the approval of the House. The borrowing powers cover the aggregate amounts that British Shipbuilders and its wholly owned subsidiaries can borrow, other than by way of interest and loans exempted under section 11(9) of the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act and public dividend capital received by British Shipbuilders.
      The hon. Member for Whitehaven asked whether I could assure him that
      1448
      that was enough. When he asked the question, the hon. Member knew that it was unanswerable. The state of the market and the degree of international agreement must be considered. The hon. Member will recognise that borrowing powers and the revenue account are separate. Profitability can affect the degree to which borrowing powers are necessary.
      Let us examine what has happened in recent months. British Shipbuilders has so far drawn £135 million from the Exchequer, against a ceiling of £300 million, plus £33 million by way of foreign borrowing in connection with the Polish deal. It also has a temporary borrowing facility of up to £30 million.
      British Shipbuilders estimates that its limit will be exceeded by early 1980. This borrowing limit was set by the previous Government to cover a five-year period but it will probably be taken up in about three years.
      Mr. Ian Lloyd: Do the figures that my hon. Friend has just given take account of the expenditure of £170 million in excess of the expenditure agreed for the Polish deal?
      Mr. Marshall: I cannot give an answer, but I shall be happy to inquire about it. We are speaking of basic global sums to which British Shipbuilders had recourse.
      The trend in borrowing reflects the adverse trading conditions facing the industry. It is important to stress that the increase in the borrowing limit in no way means support for British Shipbuilders additional to that which was outlined in my right hon. Friend's July statement, which set loss and cash limits for this year and a loss limit for next year.
      Some of the borrowings that have gone in the past to capital investment reflect a continuing trend. The figures are interesting. In 1977 and 1978 capital expenditure, less grants, totalled £17 million. Last year the figure was £23 million. Expenditure this financial year is running at about the same level.
      On capital expenditure, it seems that the order of magnitude is running at a steady level. A large part of that expenditure has been used for modernisation schemes, some of which were started prior to nationalisation. It may be of interest to the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and other hon. Members to know

      1449
      that half of that expenditure has been spent on the naval yards. I recognise the hon. Gentleman's interest in the naval yards because Cammell Laird has been moving into that area.
      The remainder of the borrowing is accounted for by losses that, after tax and interest, amounted to £93 million to 31 March 1978 and £64 million in 1978–79. In view of the uncertainty of the future size and shape of the industry and the problem of assessing market demand, I have tried to show that it is not possible to say how long the money will last.
      It was explained on Second Reading that we have asked British Shipbuilders to make substantial progress towards viability. I hope that the new limits will be longer than the five years estimated for the previous limits. In general, the Government feel that this is the right measure and that clause 1 reflects a basic undertaking given to British Shipbuilders at a difficult time. It recognises the degree of agreement reached with trade unions on the present contingency planning. In that sense, and in that spirit, I commend the clause to the Committee.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 2

      GUARANTEES IN RESPECT OF ALTERATIONS OF SHIPS, ETC.
      Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
      Mr. Dick Douglas: I tabled an amendment, Mr. Crawshaw, that was not selected, no doubt for good reasons. I wish to put some probing questions to the Minister.
      In 1976, during the Committee stage of the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill, the then Under-Secretary said in response to an amendment to impose a duty on British Shipbuilders to enter some aspects of the offshore market:
      "For all these reasons, it would be inappropriate to impose a duty on the new British Shipbuilders to enter this field. But if the corporation were to identify worthwhile opportunities for building rigs and sub
      1450
      mersibles and for diversions such as this, they would be encouraged and they could extend their activities to this area with the Secretary of State's approval."—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 20 January 1976; c. 293.]
      I do not wish to go over the whole area describing semi-submersibles and submersibles because I am sure that I should be called to order.
      It is important to consider the definitions in section 10 of the Industry Act 1972 and to ascertain from the Minister what he means by a "mobile offshore installation". It is a subject of much discussion because of the new techniques and devices engaged in offshore operations. It is important to understand clearly what he means because of the nature of guarantees that may be asked for in relation to the new devices.
      9.30 pm
      I am not clear whether the section 10 guarantees and the guarantees that stem from the Bill would apply to what is called a tethered buoyant or tension leg structure. The difficulty is that we have not built any of these structures. I press my point by way of an illustration. It is becoming clear that if oil is discovered in deeper waters the fixed structure, be it gravity based or steel jacketed, will not be the means by which such oil discoveries will be exploited. The industry is not entirely clear what devices it would use. One of the devices that is likely to be used is a tension leg platform.
      I am keen to obtain clarification because design studies are being undertaken by one of the oil companies that is operating in the North Sea, namely, Conoco. The studies have been the subject of letters between my right hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan), the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of State, Department of Energy. Unhappily, the Scottish Minister is absent from the Chamber, so I shall confine myself to reading the Minister of State's reply to my right hon. Friend. The hon. Gentle man wrote:
      "I, too, am keen that the fabrication contract"—
      that is the Conoco tension leg oil production platform—
      "should come to the UK in view of its value and the employment that it will provide and also because this will be the first full-scale platform of this type to be ordered. The

      1451
      award of the contract will of course be a matter for Conoco's own commercial judgment, but the Offshore Supplies Office (OSO) of my Department will certainly ensure that UK companies, including Scott Lithgow, have a full and fair opportunity to compete. OSO could not, however, seek to influence Conoco to favour one UK company over another.
      The timing of the fabrication contract is uncertain because the development plan for the Hutton field has not yet been received, but we do not expect Conoco to invite bids before May 1980. Scott Lithgow's experience may give them an edge but they will have to be competitive to get the contract."
      All that is perfectly fair so far as it goes, but one of the factors to be considered is the mobility of the structure. It is distinctly possible to have the structure built a considerable distance away from the North Sea and towed to site, not for completion, but in a completed state. That is a consideration that the Government must have very much in mind if they are anxious, as I am and as I hope my right hon. and hon. Friends are, to have the structure built in a United Kingdom yard.
      Other structures that have been used in the North Sea are not necessarily suitable for building in shipyards. We had to build special facilities by means of huge Government subventions. We had to build special yards to enable the building of concrete, gravity-based structures. They were towed out and placed on the oilfields. There is now a distinct opportunity to build structures of the type that I have described. Indeed, on occasions they could be specifically designed to be built in shipyards. I want to know how the Government propose to assist in terms of the guarantees that could be given. They are not expensive guarantees. By no means are they the type of guarantees that would be offered by the Japanese or other nations in order to be the first to build this type of structure.
      I have declared on previous occasions my interest in this matter. My interest in one device goes back over five years. In July 1974, I went to Los Angeles and began discussions with Deep Oil Technology in order that United Kingdom companies, or one company in particular, could become interested in this device and build it in the United Kingdom. That was a five-year planning haul. It would be ridiculous, after this time, when we are reaching the point when one company, Conoco, is anxious that this structure
      1452
      should be built—I would hope, in the United Kingdom—if we found ourselves not fully competitive because companies are not offered the necessary type of financial incentive.
      I rest my case on this detailed, almost legalistic point in terms of the interpretation of section 10 of the 1972 Act and of clause 2 of this Bill. I recognise that this can be interpreted as a narrow legal point. I know there are difficulties for the Minister who will be replying. I wish, however, to avoid the situation in which the Minister says that he cannot take action because the matter does not fall within the section of a particular Act.
      Dr. John Cunningham: We welcome the extension of the power of the Secretary of State under section 10 of the Industry Act, provided by clause 2 of the Bill. As a man who professes not to interfere in industry and who almost daily takes more powers to himself, the Minister is again giving himself more power. We welcome the proposal. It is much in accord with the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) on 4 April this year, which appears in column 831 of Hansard of that date. It is a limited measure, but it will be welcomed throughout industry. The amount of money involved—about£2 million a year is the Government estimate—is small, relatively speaking. Why cannot some effort be made to enlarge the opportunities that may be available under this provision? There is a desperate need in the ship repairing industry and in shipbuilding for more work. As the nation still with the fourth largest merchant fleet, we must have a good, soundly based ship repair industry in the United Kingdom.
      I turn to the case set out by the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions. Two of the points in its programme may be apposite in respect of the provisions under the clause. The enforcement—if it could be agreed to—of segregated ballast tanks in ships and the provision for the installation of inert gas systems where necessary are two proposals that could perhaps provide work under the provisions of the Bill, and may provide opportunities for more work. I shall be grateful if the Minister can deal with this point.

      1453
      I think that I am right in assuming that this extension of the home credit schtme will make our ship repair industry not only more competitive but more attractive to United Kingdom owners. Therefore, we call upon the Government to do everything that they can to persuade the owners of this large fleet to have their ships repaired in United Kingdom yards. I should add that here I am referring to the yards of both British Shipbuilders and those of the private sector of the industry, where there are real problems as well.
      In his remarks on the debate on clause 1 stand part, the Minister did not answer the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) about apprenticeships. Since that is important in terms of ship repair, I hope that he will now deal with that point. He mentioned our obligations under OECD and EEC treaties when he referred to aid to the industry. In his informative and now widely quoted paper on 17 October this year, Mr. John Parker made some categorical statements about the situation that exists in other EEC member States, as well as in regard to others which ostensibly at least have the same obligations under OECD as we have.
      One is bound to ask what the point is of the Government playing the game of cricket when everyone else is apparently playing under Rugby Union rules. We shall get no support for our industry if we are the only people playing the game according to that particular set of rules. While I accept that we cannot go on bidding up indefinitely, the evidence is clear that nowhere are market forces operating, especially in regard to shipbuilding and ship repair. It is all very well to say that we are the only people who are behaving properly, but that will not prevent our industry from being severely undermined by our partners and competitors.
      These statements have not been challenged by anyone, so far as I am aware. If they are not correct, I would be pleased if the Minister would say so. If they are accurate and authoritative, we would like to know the Government's view of the situation. Will they pursue this matter wihin the EEC and in OECD, or will we merely accept the situation and see our industry further undermined?
      1454
      The Minister mentioned the Esso orders—a classic example of the kind of situation about which we are talking in terms of the lack of market forces operating in the industry at large.
      We are talking about survival. We are talking about the ship repair industry. We welcome the Bill's provisions. We urge the Government, as we did in the previous debate, to show a little more vigour and determination in the discharge of their responsibilities to Briish industry.
      Mr. Michael Marshall: A number of interesting points have again been raised in this debate on clause 2. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Dunfermline (Mr. Douglas) and to his ingenuity in managing to speak on the subject he raised while staying within the rules of order. The Committee recognises that the hon. Gentleman has a long-standing interest in the tethered buoyant platform systems. We all recognise that he has a particular interest in Scott Lithgow and the connection between the two. It is only right and proper that he should ask to what extent this can be regarded as being within the ambit of the Bill.
      Without going beyond the rules of order, it is difficult for me to give the hon. Gentleman a definitive answer. I shall try to avoid getting into a legalistic interpretation. However, the reference to "installation" which already appears in section 10(9) of the Industry Act 1972 is the relevant reference that the hon. Gentleman was seeking.
      9.45 pm
      Section 12(1) of the Industry Act 1972 already defines mobile offshore installations as follows:
      "any installation which is intended for underwater exploitation of mineral resources or exploration with a view to such exploitation and can move by water from place to place without major dismantling or modification, whether or not it has its own motive power;"
      Tethered buoyant or tension-legged platforms are among a variety of offshore installations, each of which can be considered on its merits for inclusion in the home credit scheme. Part of the problem is, as has been said, that TLPs are in an early stage of development and, therefore, we shall have to await further

      1455
      development to see to what extent advantage can be taken of the provisions of the home credit scheme.
      The hon. Member for Whitehaven (Dr. Cunningham) reminded me of a point that I had not had the opportunity to pick up earlier. The points made by the hon. Members for South Shields (Dr. Clark), Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) and Newton (Mr. Evans) about the help that the shipbuilding industry training board might give to apprentices are important, and I undertake to write to them on the matter. It is something that is worthy of further examination.
      I turn to the general ambit of clause 2. The home credit scheme, which was first established under the Shipbuilding Industry Act 1967, is aimed at enabling United Kingdom shipyards to compete for orders—
      Dr. David Clark: I am grateful to the Minister for acknowledging the point about apprentices. If I give him details, will he give me an assurance that he will, as a matter of urgency, look into the case of the 37 apprentices laid off by Peter Johnston's?
      Mr. Marshall: I appreciate that the hon. Member is referring to a specific case, and if he cares to write to me I will look into the matter. He will appreciate, of course, that it may not fall within the orbit of my Department's responsibility. If it does not, I will make sure that it goes into the right hands.
      I was explaining the purpose of the home credit scheme. The point of the scheme is to give United Kingdom shipyards the opportunity to compete for orders from United Kingdom owners on equivalent financial terms to those available from overseas yards which can offer advantageous credit arrangements under their countries' export credit guarantee schemes.
      That leads to wider opportunities for conversions or alterations by United Kingdom owners which, for example, can involve jumboising or re-engining ships in the interests of greater fuel economy. The hon. Member for Whitehaven mentioned segregated ballast tanks. That is also an area where I would want to look at the precise way in which the market might develop. What perhaps was in the hon. Member's mind was that the Government support the February 1978
      1456
      International Maritime Consultative Organisation conference on tanker safety and pollution prevention. We shall ratify the 1978 protocol to the international convention for the prevention of pollution from ships in line with the recommended target date. This means that the protocol will progressively require most oil tankers to be fitted with segregated ballast tanks. This, perhaps, is an area where we might well see some useful work, and I hope that the scheme will be of assistance.
      I have referred to the jumboising or re-engining of ships and I also want to pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Newton. The Government fully recognise that here we are speaking of business not just for the shipbuilding industry, the engine industry, or the ship repairing industry but for the whole of the engineering industry that supports the shipbuilding industry. So I recognise the importance of this scheme in that wider context. Therefore, in looking at re-engining we are, in the wider sense, looking for opportunities where greater fuel economy can offer worthwhile opportunities for shipbuilding, ship repair yards and other ancillary industries.
      Such conversions or alterations have not hitherto been eligible for cover under the home credit scheme, although guaranteed credits have been available to foreign customers through the Export Credits Guarantee Department.
      Ships and mobile offshore installations will both be eligible. For ships, the minimum size will be 5,000 gross registered tonnes, although we shall be able to go down to 1,000 gross registered tonnes to match evidence of competition from outside the EEC. The conversion must entail the radical alteration of the hull, the cargo plan or the propulsion system. Similar eligibility rules will apply to mobile offshore installations.
      The normal terms of the cover offered will be a guaranteed loan of up to 80 per cent. of the contract price of the conversion, excluding any expenditure on the acquisition of the ship or structure to be converted, at an interest rate of 7½ per cent. for up to five years from delivery. These terms are in accordance with our EEC and OECD obligations, and therefore they fall squarely within the matters to which reference was made earlier tonight. As we judge them, they are within the present practice of our

      1457
      main competitors. In very exceptional circumstances—this is an important point—such as very large orders of particular importance to the industry, we may be able to extend the credit period to a maximum of eight and a half years from delivery.
      The cost of interest rate support depends on the volume of business, and we are back to the difficulty of the market projections. It will also depend on the prevailing market rates of interest. It cannot, therefore, in overall cost terms, be estimated with immediate accuracy. It is not, however, on present estimates of the market for conversions and current interest rates, expected to average more than £2 million per annum. This cost reflects the shorter term of credit proposed—five years—compared with that available for construction of ships—eight and a half years.
      As for the present home credit scheme for new ships and structures, the Ship Mortgage Finance Company Ltd. will act as the Department's agent. Applications will be made to the company and it will advise the Department on the granting of guarantees and on the security which should be obtained, arrange for the necessary legal documentation to be prepared and monitor the performance of the owner's obligations to the Department during the guarantee period.
      I thought it right to give the details, so as to put on the record the way in which the scheme will operate. We recognise that no commitments can be entered into by the Department before the enactment of the Bill. To ensure that the benefits of the scheme are available at the earliest opportunity, provisional offers may be made, subject to Royal Assent, if this is considered necessary to secure important orders which might otherwise be lost.
      What we have before us tonight is, therefore, a useful addition to the way in which British Shipbuilders will have opportunities to look rather more widely than at present. It is yet another piece of evidence of the Government's earnest in these matters. I recommend the clause.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
      Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
      Bill reported, without amendment.
      Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
      9.53 pm
      Mr. Adam Butler: I do not want to detain the House for very long. We had quite a remarkable debate on clause 1, which was very much an action replay of the Second Reading debate. The Government have no complaints about that.
      I remind the House that we have taken the Committee stage on the Floor of the House because of the urgency that we attach to the Bill and because we think that there will be benefits from its obtaining Royal Assent as soon as possible.
      I think that I described the Bill on Second Reading as small but important. In itself, as we expected, it has proved to be uncontroversial. However, it has given occasion for considerable criticism—I think it was unjustified—from those who think that the Government are not doing enough to protect the industry. Therefore, I should like to make it clear again that the Government wish to see a viable and competitive shipbuilding industry in the United Kingdom.
      Together with the other shipbuilding nations, we recognise that in the present state of the market such an objective cannot be achieved without a substantial measure of Government support. The Bill gives effect to part of the policy that I announced in July in response to British Shipbuilders' corporate plan and is an indication of our determination.
      British Shipbuilders, in drawing up and presenting that plan, advised us that an industry of the size obtaining at that time could not be sustained, and the previous Administration admitted that contraction was inevitable.
      I hope that this will be my only contentious remark, but it is totally unrealistic and financially imprudent to call for the unlimited provision of public funds. The hon. Member for Whitehaven (Dr. Cunningham) said that there should be no upper limit for the intervention fund, which implies that he is prepared to find 100 per cent. of the cost of any ship.
      Dr. John Cunningham: The Minister was being his usual careful self until

      1459
      making that point. I said that I believed that British Shipbuilders had expressed the view that there should be no upper limit. I did not say that it was my view.
      Mr. Butler: I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is not inciting others to hold that view. I was misled into believing that he was giving support to the view put forward by British Shipbuilders. Even if he did not specifically suggest that, the weight of his arguments as official Opposition spokesman and those of other hon. Gentlemen have been once again to spend more and more money.
      The hon. Gentleman also accused us of lack of vigour. When the corporate plan was put before the Labour Government in the late autumn of 1978, they refused to face the issue. They displayed no vigour. They refused to accept or reject British Shipbuilders' advice and finally, just before the election, said that they would proceed on a step-by-step basis.
      I repeat that when we came to office the intervention fund had lapsed, which made it difficult for British Shipbuilders to obtain orders. Even the provision that the previous Government made for intervention fund assistance before it lapsed was much under-utilised. The annual provision of £85 million was much vaunted, but in practice only £12½ million was spent. The unions have been more realistic than the Labour Party in accepting a contraction in British Shipbuilders' preferred strategy.
      As hon. Members pointed out, there are signs that the market is picking up, but straws in the wind are not firm orders, and as yet there are no solid grounds for optimism. With worldwide over-capacity, we remain of the view that British Shipbuilders will find it difficult to reach its target. Orders remain the key, and in order to compete British Shipbuilders will need to make determined and continuing efforts through improved productivity, design and marketing. We all want to see jobs preserved, and the only way to do that on a sure and long-term basis is for the industry to be competitive.
      The Government have taken decisive action to support British Shipbuilders in its strategy. Substantial sums of public money have been made available and we have negotiated an intervention fund until the end of the EEC fourth directive and its management is largely in our hands.
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      We have set financial targets for British Shipbuilders and ended the period of uncertainty for the industry about the support that it can expect from the Government. The industry knows the terms on which it must meet the challenge of a tough and competitive environment.
      I believe that there is an almost unprecedented spirit of co-operation within the industry at present. There is mutual understanding of the roles and responsibilities of Government, management and unions. This gives real grounds for optimism.
      It being Ten o'clock the debate stood adjourned.
      Ordered,
      That, at this day's sitting, the Shipbuilding Bill may be proceeded with, though opposed until any hour.—[Mr. Waddington.]
      Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
      Mr. Butler: There is general recognition that survival can come only through hard decisions taken and acted upon, and that the future ultimately rests in the hands of those whose future it is—namely, the management and workers of British Shipbuilders. For them the challenge is tough. It is bound to be, given the excess of world capacity in shipbuilding. But it is a challenge they will do their best to meet. As for the Government, we pledge that within the framework of the support we have announced, we will do all we can to help. Therefore, I ask the House to give the Bill its Third Reading.
      10.12 pm
      Mr. John Evans: I wish to intervene briefly in response to one or two comments made by the Minister of State. I welcome his total commitment to the maintenance of the British shipbuilding industry. I am sure that this will be welcomed by hon. Members on both sides of the House and all sections of the industry. I hope that he will understand why we raised these issues in the first place. It appears that what the Government are saying now in relation to the shipbuilding industry is somewhat at variance with what they said during the election campaign. I welcome their conversion and their desire to maintain the industry.
      The Minister was a little unfair to my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven

      1461
      (Dr. Cunningham), who referred to lack of vigour. My hon. Friend asked the Government to show increased vigour in their dealings with the EEC. There are many serious problems about world shipping and therefore it is essential that the Government should be vigorous in relation to scrap-and-build and the many other problems that face the industry.
      One problem is that of unfair competition from Eastern European countries and other countries in the Western world which are diminishing British fleets. In doing this they are diminishing the work that is available in British yards.
      The Minister referred to the necessity to ensure that the industry is competitive. We all accept that. But it is not just a question of the British worker working harder and making the industry more competitive. There is the question of the worldwide practices adopted by countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain which are detrimental to the British industry. We urge the Government to examine these practices with vigour and to ensure that the British worker is placed on a fair competitive basis with workers of other countries. At present, no matter how hard the British worker works, he cannot compete with such practices.
      Every country in the world regards the building of ships and the provision of a merchant fleet almost as a matter of national conscience and concern. I ask
      1462
      the Minister to take on board that, when he talks about the growing spirit of co-operation between unions and management, which we on the Labour Benches greatly welcome, it is also a question of there being a third party involved in the deliberations and negotiations—his Government. It is essential that they be the third party at the table in all the talks to ensure that Britain retains a viable industry.
      The Bill provides modest assistance to the industry. I made the point in Committee that we needed to know whether the Government's commitment to the industry was for two years or even longer. I do not believe, and I suspect that the Government do not believe, that worldwide trade will recover from the doldrums over a two-year period. I hope that the commitment that the Government have shown tonight in the Bill will be for longer than two years.
      With that, I welcome this modest Bill.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Bill read the Third time and passed.

  WELSH GRAND COMMITTEE
  Ordered,
  That during the proceedings on the matter of the Economy of Wales, the Welsh Grand Committee have leave to sit twice on the first day on which they shall meet; and that not-withstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 64 (Meetings of standing committees), the second such sitting shall not commence before Four o'clock nor continue for more than two hours.—[Mr. Boscawen.]
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Boscawen.]

  DOGS
  10.5 pm
  Mr. Tony Marlow: I feel rather like the number three batsman after the opening partnership has scored 200 runs: it was jolly good, but I have been waiting a hell of a long time.
  Since this debate was announced. I have been the butt of a certain amount of humour from some of my colleagues. Anyone who again says to me "Mind your step" will cease to be my hon. Friend.
  The control and licensing of dogs are very serious matters. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment knows, there is nothing quite so powerful as an idea whose time has come. This is the time when we must seriously consider introducing changes. Why now? The first reason is that the number of dogs in this country has increased. It is now 5½ million, and half of them are probably not licensed. Secondly, we have a great deal of new knowledge about the problems and the diseases caused by dogs. Thirdly, there is a tide of public opinion, which is about to become a surge.
  As we all know, dogs are man's best friend. They are a part of life, a part of the family. For many people they are very important companions. But, unfortunately, there is a small but growing minority of dogs that cause a great deal of trouble and disruption.
  The hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Soley) and I have discussed with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the British Veterinary Association the proposals that I shall make tonight. I am happy to say that our views are almost identical. I think that they agree with my proposals. What we are putting forward is in the interests not only of the public but of dogs.
  I said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that this was a serious debate, and it is. I should like you to think for a moment of one of the most attractive things known to man—a small child of two years, with fair hair and blue eyes, learning to walk and
  1464
  to talk, romping in a play area in a park. Twenty years ago one such child was doing just that and picked up a worm from the ground which got into his system and eventually found its way to the back of his eye. All that the child knew was that things were getting a bit fuzzy, a bit blurred. A child of two years could not articulate, could not say what was wrong. He did not know that it was not happening to other people, did not know that there was anything strange about it, did not know how to complain.
  Eventually, at the age of four years, the child was taken to see a doctor and then to another doctor. The doctors looked at the back of his eye and saw a growth there. They thought that perhaps it was malignant, so they enucleated it, to use the trade term. They struck it out, pulled it from the child's body to examine it, and when they did so they discovered that the child had been affected by the worm toxocara canis.
  Since that day a great deal of research has been carried out. The research continues. We now have real knowledge of the problem. One in four of soil samples taken from parks contains the worm. When the worm is in the ground it can stay alive for four years. The disease can attack the lungs. It is estimated that about 30,000 people in the country suffer from asthma possibly as a result of the worm. It can attack the brain. It is estimated that between 12,000 and 15,000 people suffer from epilepsy as a result of the worm. The case which I have mentioned illustrates the fact that it also attacks the eye. It is estimated that—we know 50 cases, we know100—perhaps 200 people a year can have a severely damaged eye as a result of this menace. If one-tenth of such problems were caused by nuclear-energy, the House would be besieged to such an extent that for a month we should not be able to get in or out.
  Before I make some brief proposals, I have a few other facts and opinions to put forward. About 4,000 sheep per year are destroyed as a result of the disease. I said that we are also concerned for dogs. Dogs are often ill-advisedly given away because they are not properly looked after, and, regrettably, 300,000 dogs a year are destroyed because of the disease. The National Farmers' Union, when it heard that this debate was coming, wrote

  1465
  to me and asked me to mention the very real problems of its members from livestock worrying. My local authority says that it is the consensus of both political groups on the parks committee that dogs should be banned from children's play areas and rugby and soccer pitches. However, at this stage, they are powerless to do anything about the matter.
  The World Health Organisation says that dogs should be excluded from children's play areas. One of many constituents who have written to me said that there is a toddlers' play area in her area which is safe from traffic but a "lovely loo for animals". The Association of District Councils has written to say that its member authorities are concerned about the matter and have pressed the Government to introduce legislation on the basis of the report of the working party on dogs, which was published three years ago. They would particularly like power to be removed from the police to local authorities and they would like to see an increase in the licence fees. They have been concerned at the inflexibility of the Home Office in confirming byelaws.
  The hon. Member for Hammersmith, North will refer to other matters, but in the meantime I should like to make a few brief proposals. First, in view of the menace of toxocara canis, the full reality of which is only just coming home to the general public. I should like it to be made a notifiable disease. Secondly, when I write questions on the subject I find that they are shuffled among three or four Departments. Surely one Department can take on the responsibility for dogs. Thirdly, the police are already over-burdened but they have the responsibility for dealing with stray dogs. The local authorities are willing, keen and able to take on the responsibility. Let us transfer it. Fourthly, there should be an increase in the licence fee. It is now the same as it was 101 years ago.
  I suggest that before a dog is licensed a certificate must be produced to show that it has been adequately wormed, because in that way we can deal with the menace. That would mean, perhaps, that many people would have to take their dogs to the vet to get a certificate, but once a year the dog could have an annual check-up. This would be of great benefit not only to society but to dogs.
  1466
  Fifthly, the possibility of having a differential licence should be investigated. I suggest that unspeyed bitches should carry a larger licence fee than speyed bitches and dogs. Sixthly, we need to adopt a different attitude to byelaws. Local authorities have been queueing up to get byelaws passed, but since the controversy at Burnley the Home Office has been loth to confirm them. Please let us have a change in that attitude.
  We face a serious problem which will not go away. Public opinion is building up. Day by day, I and other hon. Members get more correspondence on the subject. It is not an insignificant problem. The lower figure of 50 people a year losing the sight of one eye may not seem much to some people, but to a person who loses the sight of an eye it seems a great deal.
  I was addressing a small meeting earlier today at which I discussed this issue—this shows that it is a present and real threat, something that is actually happening—someone came up to me and said "It is strange you should mention that. My father lost an eye through this cause 20 years ago". We shall be irresponsible to the humans and the dogs of this country if we do not act, and act quickly.
  10.16 pm
  Mr. Clive Soley: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) for giving me the opportunity to speak, to my constitutent Mr. Athans, who has done a great deal to bring the problem to my attention, and to Professor Woodruff of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who has done much of the research work on the subject.
  I stress that this is not a move against pets. The hon. Member for Northampton, North and I want people to have pets, but there is no such thing as an irresponsible animal and there are, alas, some irresponsible owners. The views put forward in the debate have the support of the RSPCA and other animal welfare groups.
  Toxocara canis exists in dogs and cats. It seems that dogs are the major problem, presumably because the areas that they frequent are also frequented by children. It is estimated that there are 840,000 infected faeces a day in England and Wales—276 million a year. At one level, that

  1467
  may seem a humorous figure, but at another level it is a serious one.
  The disease is not notifiable, and one of my first requests is that it should be made a notifiable disease. At the moment we do not know the figures. Sample estimates suggested one case in 1974, two cases in 1975, five cases in 1977 and 10 cases in 1978. On a simple, and not necessarily accurate, statistical measure, the disease is on the increase.
  Control is important, not only for public health, but for a more balanced and healthier animal population. Dogs can be a nuisance in a number of ways: by incessant barking, particularly at night, by straying into the road and causing accidents—there are an estimated 20,000 accidents a year caused by that and in 1977 13 people were identified as having been killed in such accidents—by attacking and threatening people, including children, and, as hon. Members who have served on local authorities will know, by fouling pavements.
  There is an additional area to which we need to turn our minds. Rabies is a horrific disease that we do not yet have in this country, but there is a constant threat of its being imported, and I suggest that if we have adequate controls it will be marginally easier to control an outbreak of rabies. It would be only marginally easier, but any assistance is particularly helpful in that horrific disease which cannot easily be prevented.
  We should also consider the appointment of dog wardens, as recommended by the 1976 report of the working party on dogs. The idea is supported by the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, the Association of District Councils and many animal welfare groups. Such wardens would have an educational role with the owners of dogs and, to some extent, a welfare role in looking after stray dogs.
  It is estimated in my constituency that there is a major problem of a surplus of dogs, many of which are strays. Recently there was a complaint from a school that the fouling of a council football pitch by dogs was resulting in children being fouled by dog faeces.
  I should like the Minister to consider the suggestion of the hon. Member for Northampton, North that one Department—preferably the Department of the
  1468
  Environment—should assume responsibility for this matter. There are too many areas of overlap. The dog licence scheme needs to be looked at because the time for a review is long overdue. However, we do not want to price out of the market people who, because they live in an isolated area or are elderly, need pets.
  We need to change the park byelaws and how they are made. It took Hammersmith two years to get agreement on exercise areas, and it cost between £16,000 and £20,000 to fence off the relevant areas. Responsibility for strays should be transferred from the police to the local authority, and dogs should have to carry some identification of their owners.
  There is a host of other possibilities, but I simply suggest now that the 1976 report indicates the way forward. I strongly urge the Minister responsible to look into this matter and to pursue what is becoming an increasing health problem which affects both the community and anyone who is in any way concerned about the health and welfare of his pet.
  10.22 pm
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Marcus Fox): I am grateful for the opportunity to reply to the debate, and I say that for a number of reasons. One is that it must be the first time in history that a fox has replied to a debate on dogs.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) has raised a matter which touches many people deeply. I am left in no doubt about the national feeling that exists on the matter, and anyone who cares to examine the volume of correspondence that I receive on the subject would arrive at the same conclusion. We all know that the British are thought of as a nation of dog lovers, but even people who love dogs can be justifiably angered by the behaviour of irresponsible dog owners, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Soley) has said. Many people are indeed frankly hostile to dogs, though it would be more logical if they were hostile to irresponsible owners.
  The present law on dogs is complex. This reflects the long history of concern about dogs, and also the fact that dogs have to be considered from several points of view: amenity, health, livestock worrying and so forth. Before the Government

  1469
  can come to conclusions on the suggestions and recommendations made in the working party's report, several of my right hon. and hon. Friends will have to have an opportunity to consider the issues and their implications for local authorities' resources. This debate has helped to underline and clarify several of them and for this I am duly grateful to my hon. Friend. He is right to draw attention to the fact that the report has been in existence for three years. The Government, however, have had only six months in office.
  To reach conclusions on what action would be desirable is one thing; to be able to conclude that a desired course of action can actually be implemented is another, especially at a time of severe constraints on public expenditure and on parliamentary time. I remind the House that my noble Friend Lord Mowbray and Stourton has already said in another Place that there was little prospect for legislation in the present Session to implement any of the working party's proposals.
  Mr. Nicholas Lyell (Hemel Hempstead): My hon. Friend is already beginning to give a chapter of reasons as to why the Government should do nothing about this problem. It should be well understood that there is a natural reluctance among neighbours to report those who allow their dogs to foul places where it ought not to happen. Does it require great Government expenditure and great Government thought to introduce legislation or measures which would stop people allowing their dogs to foul at least children's playgrounds and play areas?
  Mr. Fox: If my hon. Friend will be patient, I shall deal with that point. Perhaps the minute that he has taken away will prevent me from doing so, but I shall do my best.
  My noble Friend in another place has explained that such legislation is unthinkable in this Session. I repeat that there are many issues before the House, and there is no way in which we can give a commitment to deal with this matter. I shall certainly deal with a number of points that hon. Members brought before me for my attention.
  The working party went into a great many questions. Its main proposals for
  1470
  fresh legislation were in the areas of the control of stray dogs, with which my hon. Friend is very concerned, and indeed dog licensing. It is noteworthy that it regarded even licensing as a matter subordinate to its main concern for improving dog control. On the proposal that the licence fee should be £5 it remarked:
  "The primary need … is to raise enough money to meet the costs of any effective Dog Warden Scheme."
  This emphasis reflected its belief that the problem of strays is not only a predominant cause for concern but is also a major element in almost all aspects of the dog problem.
  As my hon. Friend said, and indeed on the basis of police records, the estimate is that 200,000 dogs a year are taken to police stations as strays. But those recorded estimates have been put much higher. One million out of a total estimated population of 5 million to 6 million dogs are strays, as far as we can ascertain.
  There are clearly a large number of dog owners who cannot or will not control their pets properly. The total number of dogs is probably greater now than ever before.
  Sir Nicholas Bonsor: Am I not right in thinking that it would be perfectly possible for the Government to increase the dog licence fee without the necessity for fresh legislation?
  Mr. Fox: My hon. Friend is not correct. It would need legislation.
  I was talking about dogs and irresponsible owners. We know that many families nowadays are working and that their children are at school. Dogs are turned out for the whole day. It does not need much imagination to visualise what happens during the day. Perhaps our rising standards of amenity and public hygiene have something to do with the deeper concern on these matters.
  First, I shall deal with the question of dog wardens. The working party considered this matter. The suggestion is that we should provide money to offset the expenditure by increasing the dog licence fee. Some people are opposed to that. They do not understand why the revenue should be raised in this way and think that it should come out of the general rate. That policy is unacceptable to the Government at present.

  1471
  The working party's single most important proposal was for local authority dog wardens. It envisaged that the appointment of such wardens would be discretionary but also favoured a general duty on local authorities towards dog control. We in the Government cannot contemplate a new mandatory local authority function at a time when local authorities are having to make real and sustained reductions in the level of their expenditure. I am sure that my hon. Friends agree. However, it is important to be clear that local authorities already have powers to control dogs in a number of important ways. They may make bye-laws in respect of the control of dogs in parks and similar public open spaces, to which my hon. Friend turned his mind. They may prohibit the fouling of footpaths and exclude dogs from certain enclosed parts of parks where they might cause a particular nuisance. I remind my hon. Friend that it is not always easy to do that. We know about the case of the local authority in Burnley and the difficulties that it encountered. The Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Scotland is the confirming authority for such byelaws. I cannot say to my hon. Friend that there is any hope of bringing the control of dogs within one Government Department. My hon. Friends must satisfy themselves that the proposed byelaws strike a fair balance between the need to protect amenity and the reasonable interests of the large numbers of people who wish to exercise their dogs. However, the powers are there for the local authorities—and they are there to be used.
  Local authorities can also make orders designating roads in their area on which it is an offence to allow a dog without a lead. Above all, we should remember that in England and Wales dog wardens can be, and indeed in many cases are, appointed by local authorities under general powers. Those wardens have no official status and rely on the co-operation of the police in booking in stray dogs under the provisions of the Dogs Act 1906. Nevertheless, 80 councils in England and Wales have voluntarily set up dog warden schemes.
  Mr. Soley: The Minister may have been in danger of giving false information, although I am sure it was well- 1472
  intentioned.I understood him to say in response to an earlier point that the licence fee could not be increased without new legislation. Appendix A of the working party report says:
  "Recommendations which could be implemented under existing legislation:
  1. The annual licence fee should be increased (to £5)."
  That, of course, would pay for dog wardens.
  Mr. Marlow: The hon. Member for Hammersmith, North Mr. Soley and I, in talking about increased dog licence fees, would wish to see protection for old-age pensioners, the blind and other people of misfortune.
  Mr. Fox: It is impossible to go into detail but the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North is right in saying that it would not need new legislation to increase dog licences. However, I am sure that all hon. Members understand that the issue would have to be brought before the House for discussion. Many people would take exception to licences being increased if those increases applied to retired people.
  I accept that it is ridiculous that the cost of the licence has remained unchanged since the nineteenth century. The Labour Government said that dog warden schems would have to pay for themselves, that is, out of licence revenues This was a decision of the Department of the Environment. The local authority associations have been similarly insistent that dog wardens should not be a burden on the rates, but there are contrary opinions.
  The working party did a lot of work on the fouling of and access by dogs to public open spaces, and heard a great deal of evidence. However, it recommended no change in the present law. The question of byelaws governing the access of dogs to public open spaces is one on which few generalisations can safely be made. Certainly the exercise of detailed control requires every case to be looked at on its merits, in the light of the local situation.
  The working party said that it had received more letters of complaint, and expression of concern, about fouling than about any other subject. It came to the conclusion, however, that this is a problem which cannot easily be solved by

  1473
  law and did not subscribe to the view that central legislation would succeed where byelaws have proved difficult to enforce. On the contrary, it recommended continued use by local authorities of their existing powers to make byelaws. In particulars, it encouraged the use of bye-laws in relation to children's play areas and put some faith in educating owners, as a way of producing a change of attitude towards fouling by their pets.
  In reaching its conclusions, the working party had the benefit of medical advice about the extent of the risks of infection transmissible through dog dirt, including the condition associated with the worm toxocara canis. The working party concluded that the riks of serious infection was small. Nevertheless, the Government are well aware that there is continued concern about toxocariasis. My hon. Friend asked whether we would consider making the disease notifiable. I will consider that point. There are no firm figures for the number of people affected by it. Estimates have been bandied about and an article I read recently suggested that 200 people a year are blinded, or partially blinded, by the disease. On the other hand, Professor Woodruff of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine quotes around 50 cases a year.
  We are not aware of any evidence for the figure quoted in the article in regard to asthma and epilepsy. They may be based on the fact that, whereas 2 per 1474
  cent.of otherwise healthy people give positive results when tested for toxocara, those suffering from certain eye, lung and liver disease give much higher positive results. From this it sems to have been deduced that toxocara is responsible for the suffering of 30,000 asthma victims and 15,000 epileptics. The Government's medical advisers have cast strong doubts on the accuracy of these claims, which seem to be supported by no authoritative published evidence.
  I can assure my hon. Friend, however, that we will carefully consider all the points that he has made since we know that the question of dogs is of deep concern to many people. The hon. Gentleman raised the question of rabies. This is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food who is keeping a very careful eye on that issue.
  In conclusion, I have to say that while the Government have no intention of neglecting the question of dogs, we must consider this matter in the context of the current constraints on public expenditure and manpower. However, contrary to what my hon. Friend has asked, I hold out no hope that this matter will be dealt with in the near future. That does not mean that we will not give it the highest priority when the time comes.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes to Eleven o'clock.

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  Co-operatives
  Co-operatives
  Visiting Sports Teams
  Visiting Sports Teams
  Mortgage Rates
  Mortgage Rates
  Housing Stock
  Housing Stock
  London Docklands
  London Docklands
  Urban Areas
  Urban Areas
  Leicester
  Leicester
  Homes (Insulation)
  Homes (Insulation)
  Local Authorities (Expenditure)
  Local Authorities (Expenditure)
  Mortgages
  Mortgages
  Heathrow Airport
  Heathrow Airport
  Local Authorities (Land Surveys)
  Local Authorities (Land Surveys)
  Housing Cost Yardstick
  Housing Cost Yardstick
  Council Houses (Insulation)
  Council Houses (Insulation)
  House Purchase (First-time Buyers)
  House Purchase (First-time Buyers)
  Tenants' Charter
  Tenants' Charter
  Local Authorities (Employment)
  Local Authorities (Employment)
  Council Houses (Repair Costs)
  Council Houses (Repair Costs)
  Inner Cities
  Inner Cities
  Towns and Cities
  Towns and Cities
  Planning Applications
  Planning Applications
  Direct Labour Departments
  Direct Labour Departments
  Rent Rebates
  Rent Rebates
  Local Government (Control)
  Local Government (Control)
  Housing Corporation
  Housing Corporation
  Local Authorities (House Building)
  Local Authorities (House Building)
  Domestic Property (Compulsory Purchase)
  Domestic Property (Compulsory Purchase)
  College of St. Mark and St. John, Chelsea
  College of St. Mark and St. John, Chelsea
  Green Belt (Definition)
  Green Belt (Definition)
  New Towns (Assets)
  New Towns (Assets)
  Armed Services (Accommodation)
  Armed Services (Accommodation)
  Council House Stock (Sandwell)
  Council House Stock (Sandwell)
  Crown Employees (Accommodation)
  Crown Employees (Accommodation)
  Local Authority Properties (Repairs)
  Local Authority Properties (Repairs)
  Bloomsbury Estate
  Bloomsbury Estate
  Tenants' Charter
  Tenants' Charter
  Leasehold Reform
  Leasehold Reform
  Liverpool Docks
  Liverpool Docks
  Heather Moorland (Protection)
  Heather Moorland (Protection)
  Local Planning Authorities (Charges)
  Local Planning Authorities (Charges)
  Housing Action Areas
  Housing Action Areas
  Council Estates (Housing Co-operatives)
  Council Estates (Housing Co-operatives)
  Countryside (Designation)
  Countryside (Designation)
  Housing Service
  Housing Service
  Owner-Occupation
  Owner-Occupation
HOUSE OF COMMONS
  Press Catering Facilities
  Press Catering Facilities
  Press Gallery Accreditation
  Press Gallery Accreditation
TRANSPORT
  Trunk Roads
  Trunk Roads
  A1 (Hatfield)
  A1 (Hatfield)
  Rail Closures (Scotland)
  Rail Closures (Scotland)
  British Railways
  British Railways
  Ayr-Stranraer Rail Link
  Ayr-Stranraer Rail Link
NORTHERN IRELAND
  Lough Erne (Rescue Services)
  Lough Erne (Rescue Services)
  Ulster College
  Ulster College
  De Lorean Car
  De Lorean Car
  Royal Ulster Constabulary (Firearms)
  Royal Ulster Constabulary (Firearms)
  Education (Expenditure)
  Education (Expenditure)
  Health and Social Services (Expenditure)
  Health and Social Services (Expenditure)
  Housing Executive (Housing Costs)
  Housing Executive (Housing Costs)
  Housing Executive (Rents)
  Housing Executive (Rents)
  Industrial Stoppages
  Industrial Stoppages
  Union Flag
  Union Flag
  Royal Visit (1977)
  Royal Visit (1977)
  School Placements (Appeals)
  School Placements (Appeals)
  School Buildings
  School Buildings
  Rural Cottages (Improvement)
  Rural Cottages (Improvement)

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

LORD HOLDERNESS
The Right Honourable Richard Frederick Wood, having been created Baron Holderness, of Bishop Wilton in the County of Humberside, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Saye and Sele and the Lord Carrington.
LORD DACRE OF GLANTON
Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Esquire, having been created Baron Dacre of Glanton, of Glanton in the County of Northumberland, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Astor of Hever and the Lord Blake.

MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN
2.38 p.m.
Lord MACLEAN: My Lords, I have the honour to present to your Lordships a Message from Her Majesty the Queen, signed by her own hand. The Message is as follows:
"I have received your Address praying that the Ministry of Overseas Development (Dissolution) Order 1979 be made in the form of the draft laid before your House.
"I will comply with your request."

ROYAL ASSENT
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): 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:
Southern Rhodesia Act.
Van Diemen's Land Company Act.

IMMIGRATION: EQUALITY
2.40p.m.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Seear, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in her name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will give an assurance that they will not retreat from their commitment to full equality before the law for all citizens including women, and that they will embody in the new Nationality Bill the right of all British women to reside in Britain with their non-EEC spouses.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Belstead): My Lords, we are not retreating from the general spirit of that commitment but it was also made plain in the Conservative Party's Manifesto that there would be changes in the law governing the entry of husbands and male fiancés. This inevitably means some difference in treatment as regards the right of a woman to be joined here by her husband or fiancé. We believe that this is justified to prevent abuse of the present system by men using marriage as a means of immigration to this country. These are matters for the Immigration Rules, and we shall not wait for our Nationality Bill to implement our proposals on them.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, we can deal with the Immigration Rules in a moment; but does the noble Lord recall that in paragraph 50 of the previous Government's Green Paper on British nationality law there were four options set out on the acquisition of citizenship by virtue of marriage to a person who was himself or herself a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, and that all these four options were nondiscriminatory in regard to the two sexes? Are the Government in their forthcoming proposals intending to confine themselves within the limits of one or other of these four options, or to introduce some new proposal which will in itself be discriminatory?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, the Government are not responsible for the previous Government's Green Paper. I seem to remember, however, that the previous Government felt that it was right—indeed, necessary—only two years ago, in 1977, to take a hard look at the question of arranged marriages, and to do something about them. In fact the rules, if I remember rightly, were changed. As regards the line which my right honourable friend will be taking, I shall be making a Statement to your Lordships' House, if the House will agree, at a convenient moment after half-past three.
Lord MURRAY of GRAVESEND: My Lords, have the Government received any representations from any other Governments saying that they may well refuse the rights of British men who marry their female citizens? Also, have any other countries applied or are they expected to apply, reciprocal treatment to our citizens?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am not aware of any representations of the kind.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware what would have happened to the Royal Family through the centuries if this medieval concept of this Tory Government had been put into effect?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am not aware that previous Royal Families have indulged in arranged marriages.
The Lord Bishop of SOUTHWARK: My Lords, while welcoming the Government's statement of their commitment to the equality of all British citizens before the law, may I ask that the sensitivities of the Asian community in this country are not bruised by any suggestions that arranged marriages are necessarily to be presumed to be marriages of convenience?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I unhesitatingly give the right reverend Prelate an assurance to that effect. It is no part of the intention of Her Majesty's Government to discourage the traditional practice of the arranged marriage. But we are fully entitled, we believe, to take steps to prevent further primary immigration through marriages which are arranged for this purpose.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, referring to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, will my noble friend confirm that His Majesty King George I never did succeed in getting his wife into this country?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, if I am quick I can reply just before my former tutor at university, who was introduced into your Lordships' House today, takes his seat, and say that honestly I cannot answer that question.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, when I asked the Minister a similar question last week as to whether he could produce evidence of the abuse, he said this was a fair point and he proposed to deal with it, as I understand it, in the White Paper. Has he not again in his first Answer referred to the exploitation of the present system? So far as I can see, however, we have had no evidence of what this abuse is and how far it has gone. Is the noble Lord going to produce this evidence?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, it is a fair point and I thought I gave a fair answer. Indeed, pressed by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, I then wearied your Lordships with specific statistics. I do not think the House would want me to do that again. I think I should say to the noble Baroness on this occasion that the statistics for husbands coming into the country have shown a very marked increase since the concession which was made by the noble Baroness's Government after, I know, very mature thought and considerable hesitation in 1974. Similarly, the numbers of male fiancés coming into this country have also shown a very marked increase.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his former tutor has a lot to answer for if he taught him that the Royal Family have not entered into arranged marriages in the past, or that indeed it was not the custom for persons of Royal blood to enter into marriage with persons they had never seen? Can the noble Lord separate in his mind for a moment the concept of immigration from that of citizenship and address himself to the question of how a person acquires citizenship by virtue of a marriage to a person who is a citizen of the United Kingdom? Does he recall that the

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Green Paper, whether or not the present Government are committed to it, contained four non-discriminatory options with regard to the acquisition of citizenship by marriage to a British citizen? Will he answer my original question: Do the Government therefore in their forthcoming proposals on nationality, which are not going to be dealt with in the Statement after 3.30, intend to adhere to the principle of non-discrimination?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, what would be needed to reply to the noble Lord's question is a nationality Act and I do not think there is anything between the two sides of your Lordships' House that this is desirable; but I am afraid we have not got to the moment when we are able to introduce such legislation.

CITIZENSHIP: BRITISH WOMEN
2.52 p.m.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in the name of my noble friend Lady Seear on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will assure the House that they will not create two classes of citizenship for British women by allowing British women born in Britain to live with their non-EEC spouses whilst insisting that those British women who happen by chance to be born overseas must live abroad if they marry a non-EEC man.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has today published a White Paper on our proposals for revision of the Immigration Rules, and I shall be repeating his Statement to your Lordships later this afternoon. Under these proposals a husband or fiancé will not be allowed to settle in the United Kingdom if the primary purpose of the marriage is to obtain admission to this country or if one of the parties does not intend that the couple should live together permanently as man and wife or if the parties
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have not met. In other cases the man will have no claim to settle here but may be allowed to do so if the woman is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by birth in the United Kingdom.
We have not, however, overlooked the fact that girls will have been born abroad because their parents happened to be out of the country (for example, on Crown service or on business) at the time of their birth. It is my right honourable friend's intention to consider such cases sympathetically outside the rules.
Baroness WOOTTON of ABINGER: My Lords, may I ask by what authority the Home Secretary can consider cases outside the rules and, if he can, what is the purpose of having rules?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, for precisely the reason to which I admit I have only alluded at the end of my reply to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury—because it may be that girls may have been born outside the United Kingdom but in circumstances in which I think any fair-minded person would feel that such girls would fall within the rules as they are being made. I have mentioned that parents might have had to be abroad on Crown service or on business, and it also occurs to me that they might have been abroad as missionaries or in certain other guises. It is such cases that my right honourable friend would be looking at sympathetically.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, if I understood the noble Lord correctly, he is repeating a Statement made by his right honourable friend the Home Secretary, at a convenient time after 3.30. Might it therefore be for the convenience of the House if we dealt with these matters comprehensively in the course of dealing with that Statement later on?
Lord BELSTEAD: I would have thought so, my Lords.
The Earl of SELKIRK: My Lords, do I understand the noble Lord correctly, that anyone who goes through a form of legal marriage without the slightest intention of pursuing it will in future not receive a passport?
Lord BELSTEAD: Yes, my Lords. We are, of course, talking in the context

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of marriage to girls who are not born in the United Kingdom; otherwise what the noble Earl has said is correct.
The Lord Bishop of SOUTHWARK: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord if he would give an undertaking that in the Government's forthcoming changes in Immigration Rules and nationality law no provision will be made regarding British subjects born overseas which in fact amounts to a distinction between white women and those who are coloured?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, when your Lordships will allow me to make the Statement, I think the right reverend Prelate will find that in that way the new rules are not racially discriminatory. Girls of any race, colour or creed born in this country will, under the rules which my right honourable friend is putting to the House in the form of a White Paper, have the same rights.
The LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL (Lord Soames): My Lords, I venture to suggest that, in view of the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, with which I think we all agree, perhaps further questions should wait until the Statement is made.

RHODESIA: ACTIONS AGAINST ZAMBIA
2.57 p.m.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: 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 have made any protest to Bishop Muzorewa's régime about the invasion of Zambia and the attack on the Tanzam railway.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, my noble friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary answered a similar Question from the noble Lord yesterday and I have nothing to add to the reply he gave then.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, while his noble friend the Foreign Secretary may
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have answered a similar Question yesterday, he did not answer this Question yesterday? This Question refers to a separate and quite different incident. Would he agree that this incident of an attack on a bridge on the Tanzam railway, many hundreds of miles from where any guerrillas could have been, is an act of international aggression perpetrated by a régime for which the present Government claim to be responsible, against a friendly Commonwealth country?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the noble Lord's supplementary contains a number of assertions with which I would disagree, but I would remind the noble Lord and the House that a war is going on in that part of the world. We certainly deplore that fact. Noble Lords will recall that when the conference began at Lancaster House some 10 weeks ago we invited all the parties to that war to enter into a cease-fire. The bishop's parties in Salisbury agreed to that ceasefire but the other parties did not.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, am I to understand the noble Lord properly? Is he saying that, because there is at this moment the war between the forces of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and people from Zimbabwe-Rhodesia who are in fact trying to overthrow the Government of the country of which they were members—in other words, the forces of Mr. Nkomo and Mr. Mugabe—it is right for the forces from Zimbabwe-Rhodesia to take action such as the bombing of the Tanzam railway, which in fact invites retaliation from the Zambian forces? Is that what the noble Lord is suggesting?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, of course we deeply regret that the war continues, but I can only repeat that we invited all the parties to enter into a cease-fire at the beginning of the conference. The Muzorewa party did agree to a cease-fire but the Patriotic Front did not.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, I am sorry; the noble Lord is not answering the question.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that, while these very delicate and important negotiations are going on, the less these

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matters are brought up (which we on certain sides of the House consider as irritations), the more smoothly the conference might go?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I could not agree to condemn the actions of one side only. We regret all the military operations that are occurring in the war in that part of the world, and I can only say yet again, for the third time, that we have invited all the parties to enter into a cease-fire. If only they would.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, the noble Lord has not answered my question, because what I am asking him is: is he aware that the bombing of the Tanzam railway invites retaliation from the forces of Zambia, and therefore, in fact, could cause an escalation and an enlargement of the war?
Lord TREFGARNE: Yes, of course, my Lords. All military operations invite retaliation.
Lord DERWENT: My Lords, does the pursuit of this question really help matters at this particular moment?
Lord TREFGARNE: Not particularly.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, I must ask the noble Lord to answer my original Question. This has nothing to do with the Lancaster House Conference. This is an attack on a friendly Commonwealth country which is our friend, and which has been trying to assist the British Government in their mediations. Is this the attitude which the present Government take to the Commonwealth: that they will allow and excuse an attack from another country on a friendly Commonwealth country, and call it nothing more than an incident?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I do not think that the noble Lord can have listened to what I said. Yes, of course, we regret that the Rhodesian authorities mounted this attack into Zambia, but we also regret the attacks mounted from Zambia into Rhodesia.

THE INDO-CHINESE REFUGEE PROBLEM
3.2 p.m.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps are being taken to fulfil their commitment to take and resettle the remaining Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong within the next nine months.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, the announcement by my noble friend the Foreign Secretary on 18th July of the Government's decision to take a further 10,000 Indo-Chinese refugees from Hong Kong indicated that the timetable of admission would be agreed with the governor, and fixed no particular period. In view of the situation in Hong Kong, the Government are anxious to admit these refugees as quickly as possible. The total received in October was well over 1,000. The future rate of intake will, however, be largely determined by the speed with which the refugees can be resettled in permanent accommodation. The machinery for handling the reception and resettlement of these refugees has recently been strengthened by the formation of the Joint Committee for Refugees from Vietnam, to which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has appointed Sir Arthur Peterson as chair- man.
Lord SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am very appreciative of the full reply which the noble Lord has just given. May I ask the noble Lord whether his department, in particular, will consider with sympathy the suggestions which I believe are being made by the Hong Kong Government; that the officials who are looking into the credit of the refugees who wish to come to the United Kingdom should be strengthened, and should be able to remain in Hong Kong for longer periods than they have during 1979? Secondly, recognising that many of the refugees have very little knowledge of the United Kingdom—in the main, it is knowledge of the United States that they have—is there not a case, in order to

1253
fulfil our commitment to the colony of Hong Kong, for some form of counselling and advisory service to be set up to inform the Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong of the possibilities and the openings in this country?
Lord BELSTEAD: Yes, my Lords. I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I think that his second question in particular is something which officials in the Government, especially in my right honourable friend's department, would want to look at very carefully. May I just say in reply to the noble Lord's first question that, as I think he will be aware, the selection is carried out by officials of the Home Office and the British Council for Aid to Refugees, and they have indeed recently returned from their third visit to Hong Kong. I think it is fair for me just to say that arrivals here have at no time been limited by a lack of refugees already selected, and we do not think there is at present a need to maintain a permanent selection team in Hong Kong. But, in the light of the noble Lord's question, we will certainly keep this matter under very close review. As I said, so far as the second question is concerned, I think the noble Lord will forgive me if I say that I should like to take it away and draw my right honourable friend's attention to it and, if need be, write to the noble Lord.
Lord SHEPHERD: I thank the noble Lord.

IMMIGRATION RULES
Lord DENHAM: My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Belstead has already told your Lordships, with the leave of the House my noble friend will be repeating a Statement on the Immigration Rules at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m.

RESERVE FORCES BILL [H.L.]
The LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to the reserve and auxiliary forces, and the lieutenancies, with amendments to give effect to a recommendation of the Law
1254
Commission; and to repeal certain obsolete enactments relating to those forces. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL
Read 2a, and committed to an Unopposed Bill Committee.
GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL
Read 2a, and committed to an Unopposed Bill Committee.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE
3.6 p.m.
Lord WINSTANLEY Lord WINSTANLEY rose to call attention to the increasing inability of the National Health Service to meet the needs of patients, and to the necessity for the more efficient use of existing resources and the improvement of industrial relations within the service, 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. As noble Lords are aware, this is one of those rare occasions—some, though by no means all, might say too rare occasions—on which the privilege of selecting the topic for debate in your Lordships' House is bestowed upon noble Lords sitting on the Liberal Benches. I hope that in focusing attention on the National Health Service and its present problems and inadequacies, we are not merely pursuing a long-standing interest and preoccupation of our own, which dates back to the National Insurance Act 1911—a Liberal measure. This gave birth to the beginnings of the National Health Service, with the old panel doctor and so on for insured persons, though, unhappily, not for the dependants of insured persons; a measure taken further by a notable document, the Beveridge Report, whose author was a distinguished Liberal

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Member of your Lordships' House. I hope that we are also serving the interests of this House as a whole.
We have among us noble Lords and Baronesses with immense knowledge and experience of this subject, whose collective wisdom, at a time when Government must be devoting their thoughts to the National Health Service, should surely not be allowed to go to waste. And, after all, whether we are experts or not, we are all patients or potential patients. In discussing these matters before the Government make up their mind about the report of the Royal Commission and other pressing matters, it is surely appropriate that your Lordships' House should have an opportunity to make the kind of constructive contribution to the formulative stage of policy-making of which we all know it is so very capable.
I must begin by saying at once that I, as a doctor with more than 30 years of experience working in the National Health Service, and as spokesman for my Party on this subject, have brought with me no magic instantaneous cure, no revolutionary therapeutic measure which, at a stroke, could shorten waiting lists for in-patient or for out-patient hospital treatment; empty GPs' waiting rooms or reduce their visiting lists: conjure up skilled and necessary workers, not just doctors and nurses, but speech therapists, chiropodists and many others of the same kind who, in some areas, are conspicuous at the moment by their absence; halt the closure of pharmacies, which is now proceeding at a rate of something like nine per week and causing immense inconvenience to many patients in many areas; bring back to our shores some of those anaesthetists, radiologists and other consultants whose disciplines do not require linguistic ability, but who have left our shores to work for higher remunerations in the EEC; provide a dental service in districts where none now exists; make kidney transplants readily available to all who need them; restore the situation when GPs had time not only to talk to their patients but to listen to them as well; or, indeed, restore a sense of harmony, commitment and partnership between all those different groups who work within the National Health Service, and a commitment to the needs of patients
1256
rather than, perhaps, to their own needs as individual groups working in the service. No, my Lords; neither I nor anyone else has a magic wand with which to do any of those things. Things are not like that. All we can do is to accept that all problems do not necessarily have solutions, but we must look for those solutions none the less.
Having looked at the long list of distinguished speakers in today's debate, I am sure that suggestions will be made from all parts of your Lordships' House from which a Government that is willing to listen and able to learn could derive much benefit and assistance. In that connection, I must say that fate appears to have exercised a nice discrimination in timing by striking down with ill-health certain noble Lords on these Benches who were to have supported me. Furthermore, the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, who is so experienced in hospital matters and administration, has been summoned to grass roots to deal with a crisis and will not be able to be here to support me.
Let us consider some basic facts. First, we must all get rid of the notion that we in this country spend an unusually large percentage of our resources on health. We do not. If we examine the facts critically, as I am sure many noble Lords have done, we find that in fact we spend on health less per head of our population than many other of our European partners and, indeed, many nations beyond the Iron Curtain and in other parts of the world. I should like this country to spend a great deal more on health but I must reluctantly accept that at the moment it is unlikely that we shall. Also I have to accept that there are other functions which are desperately in need of money—matters like housing, education, food—which are relevant to the health of our community. So we have to accept that at the moment the amount which can be spent on health is necessarily limited.
We must also accept that we shall never be able to spend enough money to do everything for everybody. The cost of modern methods of treatment, diagnosis and investigation in one way or another is now so large that if every single thing which could conceivably be of benefit to the patient was at once to be made readily available to every man, woman

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and child, the Health Service—and, indeed, almost everything else—would come grinding to a halt. Let me give your Lordships a tiny example; namely, the immense progress which has been made in recent years in the transplantation of human organs and human tissue. Immense strides have properly been made in heart transplants, liver transplants and so on and they must be commended, but if we were to accept that any man, woman or child who could conceivably benefit from a human organ transplant must immediately have a right to that human organ transplant, then we should realise that we just could not cope.
Next we must accept that the workload, already large, is growing and that it will grow further. On 5th July 1948 when our National Health Service originally began, I think many people were under certain delusions; namely, that if we removed the financial barrier which existed at that time between the patient and his doctor, somehow or other ill health would be banished from the face of the earth and the need for doctors and resources in health would diminish steadily and remorselessly as we made the service available. Regrettably and unhappily, the reverse is the case.
We have to accept that our very success has added and still is adding to the total workload. Every time we learn to treat a disease which formerly was not treatable, so we increase the total workload. Every time we prolong the life of a person who formerly would no longer be with us but who continues to live and who now requires regular treatment, regular care and maintenance therapy of one kind and another, we increase the workload. In our country there are today thousands, indeed millions of people alive who in past years would have been no burden to anybody at all. They are alive and they are consuming resources; and they are requiring increasing resources. That is a fact with which we must all grapple. The workload is growing and it will continue to grow.
There seems also to be some kind of melancholy law of medical science that as we get rid of old diseases like diphtheria and the old nutritional diseases—and we have got rid of a great many, to our very great credit: to the credit of the professions and also to the credit of those who
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have been responsible for hygiene, sanitation, better housing and things of that kind—so it appears that new diseases arise to take their place. Let us think, if we can call them diseases, of the immense burden caused by accidents on the road, in the home, and at work and also of the growth of cancer and cardiovascular disease which in part may be related to the way in which we now live—to our modern life style. We have to accept that the workload will grow and that it is continuing to grow and that the more successful we are in medicine the more that load will grow. So the problem facing us is how to cope with an increasing volume of work when resources are finite and limited and when those resources are going to grow only at a minimal rate in the immediately foreseeable future.
First, we must look at legitimate ways to reduce the workload—not by stopping doing necessary things but by seeking ways by which we could possibly reduce the total burden of ill health and the total burden at the moment bearing down upon our resources. Next, surely, we must look very carefully at ways of using those resources which we have very much more efficiently and very much more effectively than we now do.
In trying to answer those two immense questions, what can I do? In a short debate I can merely try to drop one or two pebbles in the pond, if I may so describe this august House, in the hope of producing a few ripples. There are minor aspects of this subject. One could talk about the whole problem of coping with, dealing with and caring for the psychiatric-geriatric patient. That would be a day's debate, yet it is a tiny part of the whole subject; so I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I generalise and merely make a few pointers which I hope will promote and provoke observations from other speakers.
Let me deal with the question of reducing the workload. First, surely we must direct more and more of our attention to the environment in which we live—the environment at work, at home, on the roads, the air we breathe and so on. I do not think I need to elaborate on that. I am quite sure that many noble Lords are aware of small things which can be done with our environment that would very rapidly indeed reduce the

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total volume of ill health and of illness in the community in which we live. Let me take as a tiny example something to do with our environment. Surely in the long run it is going to be very much more profitable to dissuade people from smoking rather than to set up more and more complex and expensive thoracic units in different parts of the country. That would be a simple and short way to cut down the workload and reduce the overall burden.
Next we must look more closely at the question of health education. As a doctor speaking about health education, I do not mean cultivating somehow or another a new generation of amateur doctors—the kind of people who used to walk into my surgery every day to blind me with science out of the Readers' Digest. I do not mean that for a moment. I mean cultivating a greater understanding among our people of what health really is and how to achieve and maintain it. I mean, also, cultivating a greater understanding of those conditions and symptoms which require attention and the work provided by highly trained people, by resources which are in very short supply, and those which in point of fact can be left to get better on their own.
I used to get a little tired of the sort of patient who came to me at the end of a long surgery and said: Isn't it awful, all these people here wasting your time?". He was never the one who was wasting my time; it was all the other people. What I am endeavouring to say is that the vast number of people who come to doctors' surgeries come for reassurance; they come merely because they wish to know about this symptom, that symptom or the other symptom—does it matter? Provided you can convince them that it does not matter, they can go away happily. They do not necessarily need treatment or further investigation, but it is a little unfortunate that the general practitioner finds it easier to give a patient a prescription rather than to explain to that patient that he does not really need a , prescription. I am sorry to labour that point, but it is a fact that if colleagues who are general practitioners could see their way to spend a little more time in explaining to patients that something will get better on its own and they should not
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worry about it, I think in the long term we should reap considerable rewards. Whereas in a minute and a half one can dish out a bottle of inert medicine or harmless pills, it might take half an hour to explain that the patient does not really need the medicine or the pills.
Health education has to be started in the schools. There are many old dogs who can no longer learn new tricks—I am not addressing my remarks to anybody in particular, but I think that if we were to start with the younger generation there is surely hope that in the future we may have people who, first, understand the way in which to recognise danger signals which indicate an immediate need for advice and perhaps further investigation and who can also understand that certain things may be safely left to get better on their own.
Of course, if we had a more sensible approach to the whole question of certification, not only from Government but perhaps from many firms who insist on a doctor's note being produced when a person has been off for two days with a bad cold, that might cut down some of the unnecessary work. I am merely saying that health education is extremely important, and I say most earnestly to the Government that they will not save money in the long run by saving money in the short run. It is possible that health education could be better done; greater use could be made of the media, not to teach people to be amateur doctors or to teach them about elaborate scientific techniques which are nothing to do with them, but to teach them to recognise that many things can be left to get better on their own so that skilled manpower can be devoted to things that really matter, and to recognise in fact that many things do not require the use either of the doctors or of the hospitals.
I will now move on to the whole question of preventive medicine. Immediately one mentions that people tend to give three loud cheers and to say, "That is the way to proceed". Certainly it is, but even in that field we must have some kind of study of cost effectiveness. We have to start thinking about the elaborate schemes into which we enter, such as cervical cytology schemes, cervical smears—a campaign which I supported for many years—and from time to time

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we have to examine the way in which we are using the resources which are in extremely short supply, and assess whether or not we are getting a return for our investment in terms of real relief from human illness and suffering. So we have to look at them very carefully. Some things are obvious and have brought immediate benefits, like the immunisation programme for diphtheria. Before that was introduced we had some 80,000 cases a year of that very serious disease; within a matter of years the total number was down to single figures, and it remains down. That is the kind of preventive medicine which really brings immediate results.
Perhaps I might not be straying from our rules of order (if we have any rules) if I say something to anticipate a debate which is to take place tomorrow, to be introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy. Let us take the matter of fluoridation of water supplies. I do not want to start that debate here and now: I merely say that in my honest opinion—and I say this now so that your Lordships will not have to listen to me tomorrow on the same subject—no public health measure has ever been so exhaustively studied and found so free of undesirable side effects or consequences, and demonstrated to be so capable of making a substantial contribution to the public health. If something of that kind can be done and can bring an immediate return in terms of an improvement in the public health, surely that is the way to bridge the present gap between work load and resources.
We must even look at things which perhaps sound a little exotic, like genetic counselling. In many ways modern medicine has taken evolution by the scruff of the neck. No longer does the principle of the survival of the fittest endure. I am not saying that it should. We now make absolutely certain that the least fit not only survive—as indeed they should—but survive and reproduce and multiply; and again so they should. But we will disregard what we have learned about the transmission of genetically transmitted diseases at our peril. If we expand the kind of genetic counselling services which have come into being, then again we can do something to reduce the growing number of genetically transmitted diseases from which people in our country are suffering.
Many minor matters contribute to this in a wholly innocent fashion. If we take societies like the British Diabetic Association—a remarkable society doing wonderful work for diabetics—the kind of disadvantage is that this kind of society, which works for people who suffer from a particular ailment, tends also to become a social gathering, so that the diabetic meets only people who are diabetics and it then happens (not surprisingly) that an increasing number of people suffering from diabetes marry diabetics, with the result that we slowly increase the total amount of diabetes within the community. That does not greatly matter, my Lords, because here we have a disease which can now be controlled, but controlled at a price. It would surely be better to give some thought to those procedures. I merely say that in passing. I repeat, we ignore what we have learned about genetically transmitted diseases at our peril. We are not doing enough to explain what we have learned to people and to advise them about it.
I wish now to say something briefly about making better use of our limited resources. The efficiency of the National Health Service depends on four factors: the number and quality of the people doing the work; the adequacy or otherwise of the premises within which they work—such as the hospitals, the clinics, the doctors' surgeries, and so on; the tools with which they work—the X-ray appliances, the kidney machines, surgical instruments, the drugs and medicines and, finally, the administration by which those other three are welded together and given to the patient. In each of those four areas there are deficiencies, but there is also waste and duplication. So far as the number and quality of the people doing the work are concerned, over and over again we come across examples of people duplicating other people's work. For example, we get duplication as between the school medical service and the family doctor; as between the occupational medical service and family doctors, and indeed hospital doctors.
In short, so far as people are concerned we are not really spending time on the things which bring the maximum return and we are often duplicating the work of others. Many of my colleagues in your Lordships' House who are doctors and who practice medicine, either in hospitals

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or outside, if they pause and think I am sure they will tell us that they often spend time doing work which really could be done by somebody with much less expensive training and could be done in a very different way. We make nothing like enough use of ancillaries of one kind or another; nor do we make enough use of volunteers and of voluntary organisations, which are only too willing, ready and able, as they have demonstrated over and over again, to save the National Health Service enormous amounts of money by providing services themselves.
On premises, it is a waste of resources to persist with old and dilapidated buildings which consume resources and waste them. It is a waste of resources, as other noble Lords will explain, I am sure, to have in hospital at a very high daily cost people who frankly ought to be looked after outside hospital, at home or in ways which are very much less consumptive of resources which are in very short supply.
I move on to the tools with which we work. How many patients are referred regularly for unnecessary X-rays merely because it has been the habit to send the patient for X-rays, or merely because it is a wise precaution in case there should be some medico-legal inquiry crop up at a later stage and some learned counsel asks, "Did you not send the patient for an X-ray?"? People are sent daily to casualty departments for X-rays which nobody wants to look at, merely for the sake of some kind of medico-legal necessity which might possibly arise in the future.
What about drugs? I have no wish to see a nationalised drug industry. The nationalised pharmaceutical industry of the Soviet Union has produced no new therapeutic substance of any significance at all, whereas our own industry has produced an enormous number of new products which have revolutionised people's lives. But while we keep on producing new products, I do not see much enthusiasm for getting rid of old ones. Because doctors are conservative people and some doctors greatly object to anybody telling them what to prescribe or not to prescribe, it is now necessary for the average pharmacist to have on his shelves perhaps 80 or 90 different kinds
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of antihistamines, 40 or 50 different kinds of iron preparations, just in case some obstinate and conservative old general practitioner insists on going on prescribing them. All of us who work in this field in any way must be prepared to start doing something about variety reduction so far as the use of instruments are concerned and so far as drugs are concerned, and we must also be prepared to start doing something in the way of cost-effective studies with regard to what we are actually doing.
On administration I do not wish to say very much. A lot will be said in the course of this debate. I agree that we should phase out one tier. I am not sure that I would like to discuss which tier, but whichever tier is phased out I hope it will be recognised that there is a real need to establish and preserve some kind of health service unit which has substantial local involvement, local commitment, and is capable of generating local pride in the health services within a locality. Let us not move away from that, whatever else we do.
On industrial relations I will say little. My noble friend Lord Rochester will deal with that aspect of the subject from our point of view. It is a very important aspect and one to which some answer will have to be found. I have no magic wand and I greatly doubt whether my noble friend Lord Rochester has.
Finally, may I say a word about finance and charges. I should like to refer noble Lords in particular to Recommendation 112 of the Royal Commission report, which substantially turns the Commission's back on the idea of charges at the time of need and recommends the gradual phasing out of charges. I am under no delusion that the National Health Service is free. It has to be paid for. I take the view, and my noble friends take the view, that it is better that it should be paid for throughout life on a taxation or insurance basis rather than at the time of need by the patient.
Here I must say a final word about the rumours with regard to a massive increase in prescription charges. With regard to prescription charges I merely say this, that a whole system of elaborate exceptions and exemptions, with season

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tickets or certificates of pre-payment, exceptions for this category of diseases or that, cannot make right in the end something which is wrong and a muddle to start with. If the present Government decide that they wish to make a charge, so be it. I would not agree with them. I believe payment should be spread throughout life and not levied at the time of need when the patient is least able to pay.
But surely that charge should be related to the actual demand made on the service. A prescription charge does not do that. The patient who spends three-quarters of an hour of a general practitioner's time for matrimonial advice, often very necessary advice, needs no prescription, pays nothing. The patient with diabetes who may want some insulin, cotton wool, surgical spirit, needles or whatever, might pay £2 or £3 and take only half a minute of the doctor's time. There is no relation to the cost of the drug. An individual drug might cost £50 a tablet and the patient will pay 70p. A prescription for iron and vitamins might cost a few pence a bucketful, but the patient may pay £2 or £3. Let us remember that the patient who costs the State money by having his pneumonia in hospital not only gets his drugs free but he gets his laundry and food and everything else free. The patient who has his pneumonia at home and saves us money has to pay a prescription charge on his drugs which could add up to £4 or £5 or even more.
Let us remember the consequences of prescription charges and what happened before. They lead first of all to poly-pharmacy; that is, an enthusiastic effort by the drug firms to save patients money by including in one tablet nine or ten ingredients which would formerly have been prescribed separately. It is not very good pharmacy, not very good therapeutics; but it is very attractive to the GP who wishes to save his patient money, so he prescribes that which in the end may cost the service a good deal more. This tendency to prescribe blunderbuss preparations, everything in one tablet rather than in several, could cost money in the long run. One other consequence of prescription charges is bulk prescribing. General practitioners will, as prices go up, prescribe in larger and larger amounts, particularly for elderly patients, in the hope that it will save them money. It
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will not save the Government money; it will in the long run cost money.
My Lords, I have gone on speaking for longer than I meant to. To conclude I would merely say this. I hope, and I feel sure, that in the course of our discussions on this Motion we will realise that what matters in the National Health Service is the patient. I would say that when those who work in the National Health Service and those who legislate about it in this House or in another place come to consider the Health Service entirely from the point of view of the patient, rather than from the point of view of their own wellbeing in their own work, whatever it is, then I think we shall make progress at long last.
My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

IMMIGRATION RULES
3.38 p.m.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. The Statement is as follows:
"I am today publishing a White Paper setting out the Government's proposals for revising the Immigration Rules. The Immigration Act 1971 requires the Home Secretary to lay before Parliament a statement of any changes in the Immigration Rules, and the statement may be disapproved by a Resolution of either House. My purpose in publishing our proposals as a White Paper is to enable them to be debated before I lay that statement of the new rules. The White Paper is the result of a comprehensive review. The new rules will be clearer, easier to operate and firmer in a number of critical areas.
"We shall end the automatic rights of entry of the husband or fiancé of a woman settled in this country. But it is not my intention to keep out the husband or fiancé of a woman who was born in the United Kingdom and whose marriage is not contracted for immigration purposes. The object of the new rules is to prevent the exploitation of marriage as an instrument of primary immigration. We cannot permit that

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to continue. I have not overlooked the fact that some girls will have been born abroad because their parents happened to be out of the country (for example, in Crown service or business) at the time of their birth. It is my intention to consider such cases sympathetically for favourable treatment outside the rules.
"We undertook to end the practice of allowing permanent settlement for those who come here for a temporary stay. The new rules will provide that visitors and students will not be able to remain for another temporary purpose if this carries with it the prospect of eventual settlement. Visitors will be prohibited from taking employment. People who wish to set up in business or stay here as self-employed persons or as persons of independent means will have to meet stricter requirements and will need first to obtain entry clearance.
"We undertook to limit the entry of parents, grandparents and children over 18 to a small number of urgent compassionate cases. Children aged 18 or over will qualify for settlement only where the circumstances are of the most strongly compassionate nature, though special consideration will be given to daughters under 21 who formed part of the family unit overseas and have no other relative to whom they can turn. Parents and grandparents aged 65 or over and widowed mothers already have to show that they are wholly or mainly dependent on children in this country who can support and accommodate them. In future they will also have to show that they are without other relatives in their own country to whom they can turn and that they have a standard of living substantially below that of their own country. Parents and grandparents under 65 will not qualify for entry, save in the most exceptional compassionate circumstances.
"We also said we would severely restrict the issue of work permits. This is not a matter for the Immigration Rules, but my honourable and learned friend the Under-Secretary of State for Employment is answering a Written Question on the subject today.
"The White Paper explains that the Government will consider on the basis
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of the present rules all applications made before today.
"The other changes in the White Paper are the result of the comprehensive review which I have mentioned. Obscurities have been cleared up, anomalies have been removed, and the scope for abuse and evasion of the control has been reduced.
"The Government believe that firm immigration control is essential in order to achieve good community relations. The new rules will not affect our commitment to certain United Kingdom passport holders being admitted under the special voucher scheme, nor to men lawfully settled here who wish to be joined by their wives and young children. We shall continue to welcome the genuine visitor and the genuine student. What we are determined to do is to deal strictly with those who seek to evade or manipulate the control."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
3.42 p.m.
Baroness STEDMAN: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, for repeating the Statement. There are one or two comments that I should like to make. First, quite early on in the Statement, he says, in effect, that the White Paper gives the details of all the proposed controls and that he will enable them to be debated before the new rules are laid. I hope that the noble Lord when replying will give us an assurance that time will be given for debate on those rules to take place in this House as well as in another place.
A year ago the present Prime Minister spoke about the country being swamped with immigrants. It was not true then and we said so; and it is not true today. At the election the Conservatives said three things. First, that they would maintain a register—that seems to have been dropped. They said that they would establish a quota—that seems to have gone by the board. They said that there would be restrictions on husbands and fiancés—half of that appears to have been dropped because the only restrictions left are those which affect Asian women. At one stage it would seem that the argument was about numbers and now, when we come down to it, it is about the abuse of the regulations.

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I remind the noble Lord that in 1977 we introduced measures to deal with marriages of convenience, and for the most part they seem to have worked. So two and a half out of the three election proposals have now been dropped and I contend that what we are left with is both racist and reactionary. The attack is on an arranged marriage system. I contend that it is not for Governments to attack minority cultures. The practice will change with time, but such a practice must change at the pace which can be set by the ethnic minorities themselves and not by regulations of Governments.
Before we have the proposed debate we need more facts. For example, prior to the election we held an inquiry into overstaying. I believe that the results of that inquiry showed that it was not the coloured people who were overstaying. Will the Government now publish the results of that inquiry and will they make those facts available to both Houses? I believe that the major primary immigration is over, and has been for some time.
As regards the other proposed changes, what of the children who have been left behind to go to university or to look after elderly grandparents and who will now no longer be able to join their families? Many of them will be entirely alone. What about the parents and the grandparents who cannot join their children? It is inhuman to try to prevent a family from looking after its elderly people. That is entirely lacking in compassion. It will make little difference to the total number of black people in Britain, but it will cause the utmost pain to the families affected. I contend that it is being done solely to satisfy racial prejudice.
The Statement says that the new rules will be applied from today. Is that so, my Lords?—before either House has debated the proposals or the rules have been laid? Does that statement tie up with paragraph 13 of the White Paper which seems to imply something slightly different? The developing countries have moved towards equal treatment on nationality law for the men and women citizens of their countries. Now we are creating three categories of citizenship: men and women born in Britain and women who were born overseas. The White Paper begins by saying that:
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"Immigration officers will carry out their duties without regard to the race, colour or religion of the people seeking to enter the United Kingdom".
That is as may be, but our contention is that these proposals are sex discriminatory and are quite unworthy of a British Government.
3.47 p.m.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Lord about three matters. As regards refugees, is he aware that, in two of the places where they are referred to, only the convention and not the protocol is mentioned and therefore they are technically deficient? Moreover, is he aware that the immigration officer is given a very wide discretion as to when he should refer applications for refugee status to the Home Office; that the immigration officer is not instructed to inform the passenger of his right to contact the United Nations High Commissioner or the United Kingdom Immigrants Advisory Service; that there is no objective machinery for determining claims to refugee status; and that, as regards all those matters, the requests made by the UNHCR representative here have not been satisfied?
As regards parents and grandparents, is he aware that very few are permitted to enter under the existing rules, that they are not even separately distinguished in the statistics, and that the few parents and grandparents who will be denied entry as a result of the harsher provisions now contained in these draft proposals will be caused very serious hardship? It is incompatible with the Tory Party's claim to be the party of the family to deny entry to those few parents and grandparents and children between 18 and 21.
If it is the intention of the Home Secretary invariably to use his discretion to admit, outside the rules, the husband of a United Kingdom citizen—a woman herself born outside the United Kingdom, although the child of a United Kingdom-born citizen—why could that not have been embodied in the rules themselves? Is he aware that the provisions regarding husbands are retroactive, in that they apply to the husbands of women who were not born in the United Kingdom, although they have hitherto had that right up to the time that these rules were published?

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How could the Minister claim, as he did in answer to the Question that I put to him on 7th November, that the number of husbands entering Britain under the previous rules, is evidence of abuse when, if one looks at the immigration statistics themselves, in each of the last six years the number of wives entering the United Kingdom has exceeded the number of husbands?
Finally, these changes will not satisfy the commitment in the Tory Manifesto to an immediate and substantial reduction in net immigration. But it will have the effect of causing grave hardship and anxiety to a few families, and of undermining community relations by creating needless anxieties among the ethnic minorities.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, have asked me a series of questions which persuades me—indeed, that is the intention, as indicated in the Statement—that some further discussion in your Lordships' House would be desirable. Of course, this would be arranged through the usual channels. I say to the noble Baroness that this has nothing to do with attacking minority cultures. About three-quarters of an hour ago I specifically gave an assurance on this point to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. I shall certainly look into the question asked by the noble Baroness about the project within the Home Office on "over-stayers".
I come to the points which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, raised with me about refugees. In order to get the matter straight I shall say this to the noble Lord. The paragraphs with regard to those claiming refugee status under the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees and its 1967 protocol, and to those seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, are being revised to make it clear that a refugee or an asylum claim has precedence over other parts of the rules, and that where such an application is well-founded the person is not to be removed to the country in which he has a well-founded fear of persecution. This is already our practice, but the drafting of the current provision of the rules has been criticised, and we want to make it
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clear. I am very pleased that I have this opportunity to make the point absolutely clear.
At this stage it might be the wish of the House that I do not burden your Lordships with any other remarks, except on one matter. Several times this afternoon I have been asked for statistics. The statistics show something without a peradventure. It is that after long and earnest consideration by political parties on both sides of the House; after one Home Secretary, in the shape of the right honourable gentleman, Mr. Callaghan, in 1969 had brought down a bar on many forms of immigration; after deep thought in 1974 and debate in your Lordships' House in which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, warned your Lordships of the dangers of a wave of immigration if something was not done about the particular problem of husbands and fiancés; after the Home Secretary of the day, Mr. Roy Jenkins, took the view that he would make a concession in this matter, and bearing in mind the fact that clearly this is a very difficult problem, it is absolutely certain that the numbers of both husbands and wives coming into this country have enormously increased, and increased in particular from the Indian sub-continent.
It is for that reason, and because we are certain that many of these partnerships are arranged to the detriment of girls living in this country, that we felt it right to make the Statement to your Lordships today.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, I welcome the Statement which my noble friend has just made and congratulate him on its detail. It is a fairly balanced solution to what undoubtedly is a complicated question. Over the past 15 years in this House we have had many discussions on immigration. At times the discussion has centred on the matters which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, so often raises, and which have been effectively dealt with in the Statement. But over the years there have certainly been anxieties on this side of the House and I think on the Cross-Benches about the whole question of immigration. Admittedly it is a very sensitive matter which has habitually raised great emotions. I ask my noble friend to bear in mind, and to reassure his right honourable friend the Home

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Secretary, that there remains in this country widespread anxiety that, under the guise of emotion such as we have heard today and at other times, increases in immigration may occur. There is undoubtedly great anxiety that the scale on which immigration has occurred in this country in the last 15 years has imperilled the rights and privileges of native citizens. This has manifested itself in housing, health and education. It is on those grounds that I hope my noble friend will remind his right honourable friend of the strength of feeling there is that emotion may cause an excess and a bending of the rules of immigration.
Baroness FISHER of REDNAL: My Lords, I recognise that the Government are committed to equality between the sexes, although that might not go down very well with the noble Lord, Lord Barnby. Perhaps he does not even believe in equality between the sexes. Will the Government consider changing the legislation, because that is what will be necessary—not changing the rules—so that the right of British men born overseas to marry and to settle in Britain with foreign wives is taken away from British men? I ask this question bearing in mind the equality between the sexes which the Government are supposed to support.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords—
Lord DENHAM: My Lords, I do not want to interrupt the noble Lord, but it is usual on these matters, after the two initial statements, for each question to be answered separately. If my noble friend can do that and then turn to the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, it will be easier for the House.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Barnby for his intervention. In essence, my noble friend was saying something which was in the manifesto of his political party and mine at the last election—at least, I think it was in the manifesto—namely, that firm immigration policy leads to good race relations. I believe that that is right and I know that that is what my noble friend believes.
In answer to the noble Baroness, no, we are not at present, as I made clear
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when I answered Questions earlier this afternoon, considering the introduction of a nationality Bill, not because it is something that we do not want—indeed, we do and I believe that there is common ground on this—but because I am afraid I must say to the House that we are simply not ready to introduce that particular legislation at present.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, in answer to a supplementary question from me last week, I understood the noble Lord to admit that there was some dichotomy within the Conservative Party manifesto at the election. If he has read beyond what he has just quoted, he will find that the Conservative Party put itself forward as a party which was going to control immigration in the interests of better community relations in this country, but it then went on to insist that the rights of all British citizens today should be equal. Does this White Paper not contradict that pledge? Is it, therefore, not the case that the Government are introducing legislation which is completely opposed to the mandate on which they were elected?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to answer questions from the noble Lord. He asks me the same questions from week to week and I give him the same answers. The answer to the noble Lord is, no. I give that answer because we made it clear in our manifesto that we believe that a firm immigration policy is the necessary precursor to good race relations. We also made it quite plain in our election manifesto that we would change the rules governing the entry of husbands and male finacés in order to deal with the exploitation of marriage as a means of primary immigration of men for work. I must say that I cannot think of a practice which is more likely to lead to worsened race relations. That is why I have no hesitation at all in following my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and making this Statement to your Lordships today.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, the noble Lord and all Members of your Lordships' House will know that I do not agree that firm immigration controls in fact are an aid to good race relations. You have often heard me say hat they do the direct opposite. How

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ever, that is not my reason for rising. My reason for rising is to ask the noble Lord to beg his right honourable friend to look at this again. With regard to the statistics he is quoting, there is evidence that in fact there are more wives coming than husbands, which merely indicates that people want to marry in that particular way. What he is in fact doing is to penalise people who have obeyed the law because certain people are breaking the law.
Would it not be better for his right honourable friend to look for a tighter way of making sure that there is not evasion, rather than this blanket refusal to allow people to exercise a right they already have? The analogy to what he is doing would be if my noble friend Lord Sainsbury were to close his supermarkets in order to stop shoplifting. This is the analogy to what is being done. Will the noble Lord ask his right honourable friend to look at this matter much more seriously, because all that is happening as a consequence is that there will be more unpleasantness—and we have too much already.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for the way in which he has put his question. I must say that in the time that I have been in your Lordships' House together with the noble Lord I have learned to listen carefully to what he says. Certainly I shall draw the attention of my right honourable friend to what the noble Lord has said. That is not just a form of words. Deliberately these proposals, which are of course much wider than the specific point about the entry of husbands and fiancés, have been put to Parliament in the form of a White Paper so that it would be possible for both Houses of Parliament, if the Members of both Houses wish to do so, to debate these matters before the order for the rules is actually laid.
I should add that from time to time I get the opportunity to see individual cases, and there is no doubt in my mind that the exploitation of immigration control in the way we have been talking about in the last few minutes does in fact occur. If one attaches that to the statistics concerning the increase in husbands and fiancés one can only be led to the conclusion that exploitation is occurring
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more and more. I would just say to your Lordships that if this is the case and it is not ended, then it brings into disrepute the system of an arranged marriage arranged within the country not for the purpose of primary immigration, and that is yet another reason why I believe it has been right to make this Statement today.
Lord ELWYN-JONES: My Lords, may I ask two short questions. First, has consideration been given to the question whether the new rules are in compliance with the provisions of the European Convention of Human Rights, and in particular Articles 8, 12 and 14? I do not expect the noble Lord to have those immediately in his mind. Perhaps we can be informed in due course whether that question has been examined and what conclusion has been reached, because I greatly fear that the Government and this country may be in grave difficulty under the terms of the convention.
Secondly, in relation to girls who will have been born abroad because their parents happen to have been out of the country and for whom consideration should be given, the Statement says:
"It is my intention to consider such cases sympathetically for favourable treatment outside the Rules".
Does that mean that in any given case a wide discretion will be given to the Minister whether to apply the rules or not? Is this a customary way of dealing with rules? Should there not be an attempt at any rate to spell out in the rules the exceptions that are contemplated? Otherwise the purpose of having rules at all seems to be minimal.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, if I may reply to the first question which the noble and learned Lord has put to me, consideration has been given by my right honourable friend as to whether the changes proposed in this White Paper are consonant with the provisions of the European Convention, particularly the articles that the noble and learned Lord mentioned. My right honourable friend believes that the Government have a perfectly respectable argument for doing what we are proposing. The answer to the noble and learned Lord's first question, therefore, is, Yes, we have taken this seriously into account.

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So far as the second point is concerned, if I may say so, the noble and learned Lord has, with his customary accuracy, hit the nail on the head. The matter which he raises is something which has concerned my right honourable friend in trying to decide how to present the White Paper to your Lordships' House, as to whether or not the exceptions outside the rules for girls born abroad could be framed in the White Paper. It is true that at the moment we simply refer to exceptions and give an indication of the sort of exceptions the Home Secretary would have in mind. Your Lordships might like to go into this in more detail if the House comes to debate these matters further.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, in the light of the Statement, may I ask whether the Minister is going to advise British women who are abroad, that if they become pregnant they had better come back for their confinement.?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, there is not the slightest need to do anything of the sort, precisely because the White Paper refers to the discretion of the Home Secretary.
Baroness LOCKWOOD: My Lords, I wonder whether I may first declare an interest, and secondly therefore seek the approval of the House to put a further question to the Minister. It seems, in looking at paragraph 50 of the White Paper, that even British women born here are going to have no automatic right to bring a spouse into this country. What they have is the right to seek permission to do so.
They have a number of obstacles to overcome. In the first place, they will have to establish that they were born in this country. Having established that they were born in the country, then there may be a clearance permit issued for their spouse, or their fiancé, to enter the country. It is only "may", it is not automatic. One has to look at the three clauses contained in paragraph 50. Therefore it seems that not only are British women who were born abroad going to have great difficulty in coming back into the country with their spouses, and it will be dependent on the Home Secretary's discretion; it
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also seems as though the Home Secretary is going to have to exercise discretion in relation to those British women who are born here in this country.
May I link this with the provisions in relation to EEC citizens. A woman, a member of certainly those EEC countries—and there are a number of them—which provide equal rights for citizenship to men and women, such as France, Italy, Germany and Denmark, would be able to marry outside the EEC. Would the Minister confirm that they would then be able to bring into this country a spouse from South-East Asia or from any other part of the world, and that that would place them at a very great advantage compared to British women?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I appreciate the concern which the noble Baroness, as chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission, has about this aspect of the White Paper but, if she will forgive me saying so, I think she is disregarding the reason why paragraph 50 appears in the White Paper. It appears there because the Government believe, and I think many of your Lordships would agree, that we are entitled in this country to take steps to prevent primary immigration through marriages which are arranged for that purpose and for that purpose only.
Regarding the noble Baroness's question about the EEC, it is technically correct to say that a woman who is an EEC national, if I may put it that way, and who comes here to work, may bring her husband and dependants with her. But there is no evidence to show that many are seeking to do that, and, when such women are wanting to do it, those marriages are not being used for the purpose of primary immigration. Therefore although there appears to be a contradiction between the effects so far as EEC nationals are concerned and the effects so far as other men and women are concerned, it is only an appearance; the fact of the matter is that those EEC cases have nothing to do with using marriage for the purpose of primary immigration.
Lord MURRAY of GRAVESEND: My Lords, one point which the Minister—-
Lord DENHAM: My Lords, it is of course for the House to decide, but noble Lords may feel that, having spent 33 minutes on this subject and having a long list of speakers wishing to take part in today's debate, we might leave this matter until we come to debate it later on.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE
Debate resumed.
4.12 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, by the time we come to the end of this debate I have no doubt that many of your Lordships will be glad that we had two maiden speeches this afternoon because at least they are required by the custom of the House not to speak too long and to be non-controversial. I am sure I can say with the approval of the House how delighted we all are to have two maiden speakers in the noble Earl, Lord Erne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw, and how much we look forward to hearing them.
I suspect that by the time I sit down noble Lords will have come to the conclusion that I have been both disagreeable and controversial. One fact we must recognise, namely that, when it comes to what should be done in the National Health Service, there is a wide gulf separating noble Lords opposite from those of us on this side as to what we believe is absolutely essential and necessary. Let me say at the outset that in our view the Government plans affecting the NHS which have been set out recently can only be described as absolutely disgraceful.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, when talking about the NHS—and I thought he presented a very fair and impartial view of what needs to be done—said, "We are all patients or potential patients". I very much doubt whether that applies to most noble Lords opposite, who are more likely to be private patients and, when necessary, occupants of private beds.
Several noble Lords: Nonsense!
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: It is not nonsense, my Lords, because I happen
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to know the private doctor of a good many of them. It is not nonsense and they know it.
Baroness FAITHFULL: What about confidentiality, my Lords?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, if noble Lords in the Chamber say, "My doctor is sitting behind me", there is nothing confidential about it. In the five years when I was a Minister in the Labour Government I was subjected by noble Lords opposite to a good deal of criticism about the NHS and all I wish to say about the achievements of the last Government is that capital spending did not suffer in any one year under us; under Labour the NHS did well out of the total public expenditure. We managed to increase its share each year and in those five years there was a tremendous increase in medical staff—4,000 more hospital doctors, 1,300 more general practitioners, 1,000 more midwives and 45,000 more nurses. The number of patients who became in-patients in the last year exceeded 6 million, a figure never before reached, and there were over 3 million more dental treatments in 1978 than in 1973; in 1978 there were 27·1 million dental treatments as against 23·7 million in 1973. I mention those figures for no other reason than to show that the NHS, in spite of all the difficulties the Labour Government had to face, was not static.
I wish to refer to the Conservatives Election Manifesto of April 1979, in which they said:
"In our National Health Service standards are falling; there is a crisis of morale; too often patients' needs do not come first. It is not our intention to reduce spending on the Health Service; indeed, we intend to make better use of what resources are available".
On 12th June 1979, after the election, they said:
"As we have repeatedly made clear, it is not our intention to reduce spending on the National Health Service".
Then we had the Secretary of State for Social Services saying in the House of Commons on 17th July 1979, about five weeks after the Statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer:
"We anticipate that the total amount to be squeezed [from the NHS] will be of the order of £90 to £100 million in this year. Of this only £35 to £40 million is a result of the increase in

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VAT … I concede at once that some health authorities, especially some of those in London, are faced with the need to make real cuts this year in order to remain within their cash limits. It is not for me or my Department to tell them where or how to make their savings. As responsible authorities, it is up to them to look at their priorities carefully and make savings where they will do least harm to patients' care".
"Least harm"—not no harm. It may be argued by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, "But we did not know the state of the country's finances when we came to power." I am sure that that may well be true, but what a stupid remark to make: that one will not do something if one does not know what the circumstances are; far better to have made no promises at all. In fact the Government ordered health authorities to cut £125 million from their budgets before 31st March next. The Secretary of State expressed confidence that the cuts could be restricted to the administrative service. He knows very different now—that they cannot be confined to the administrative service. My Lords—
Lord WOLVERTON: My Lords, I hate to interrupt the noble Lord in an important debate like this, but the Government's White Paper on expenditure, issued in November, stated:
"The Government plans to maintain spending on the National Health Service in 1980–81 at the level proposed by the late Administration".
That has only recently been stated in the Government's expenditure plans for 1980–81, yet we have just been told by the noble Lord that the Government are going to make cuts. They may be making cuts on the administration side, but they have said that they are not going to cut spending on the National Health Service. So I should like to know what the noble Lord thinks about this.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I have just said that the Government have ordered the health authorities to cut £125 million from their budgets before 31st March, 1980. Cuts of that magnitude cannot be imposed without affecting patient care; and in a matter of a few minutes I shall enumerate the way in which this is being done. What is really happening is that health authorities are proposing the temporary or permanent closure of dozens of hospitals and clinics—that cannot be denied—the closure of
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hundreds of wards and special units; leaving vacancies for doctors and nurses unfilled; cutting out holiday cover for doctors; reducing staffing levels in laboratory services; postponing all new developments to improve services.
Let us make no mistake about it, my Lords; it means a real deterioration in the service that the National Health Service can offer. None of this is surprising to us on this side of the House. I am sure that this will be denied by the noble Baroness: the Conservative Party has never whole-heartedly accepted the National Health Service, either in principle or in practice. It is doubtful whether noble Lords opposite know much, if anything, about it—certainly not, I believe, from personal experience, because it is common knowledge that many of them use the private sector. I am not quarrelling about that, but I am saying that one is in a far better position to make judgments if one really knows what is going on.
The Secretary of State's room in the Department of Health and Social Security contained a portrait of Aneurin Bevan—at least in my day. I read recently that,
"A large square of unfaded wallpaper above the Secretary of State's desk at the Elephant and Castle is symbolic. For years a portrait of Aneurin Bevan, founding father of the National Health Service, hung there. Patrick Jenkin, the new Social Services Secretary, has had it removed. Instead on the sideboard is a framed photograph of Iain Macleod".
May I say that I am very glad that he has removed the portrait because, bearing in mind what goes on in that room at present, it would be an insult to have it there. I am not so sure that the photograph of the late Iain Macleod is appropriate because if there was one thing that the late Iain Macleod stood for above everything else, it was his belief in one nation, and this Government, let us make no mistake about it, believe in two nations: the "haves", the richest 7 per cent., to whom they gave 34 per cent. of the tax cuts, so that they could go off and buy private medicine and private education; and the "have nots", the 10 per cent., to whom they gave 2 per cent., and who have to suffer deteriorating health and education services.
The growth of separate private medicine, approved and encouraged by the present Government, can be accomplished only at the expense of the National Health Service. I ask noble Lords opposite to

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take note of this: that the growth of separate private medicine, approved and encouraged as I believe it is by the present Government, can be accomplished only at the expense of the National Health Service. Private medicine can in many ways make tempting offers to doctors, nurses and other medical personnel who in the end will not be treating citizens of the United Kingdom. The vast growth of private medicine in this country is a growing concern; it is also a cause of growing anxiety to all of us on this side of the House. As I said on a previous occasion, one can go into Wellington Hospital and it will not cost more than just over £900 a week—I emphasise a week—using doctors who have been trained in this country at public expense, drawing on nurses whom we badly need in our National Health Service hospitals, and as I said a few moments ago, to a very large extent they are treating anybody but citizens of the United Kingdom.
We know that the Government want to encourage medical insurance schemes by introducing tax relief on contributions, in order to shift the cost of the Health Service from taxes to insurance. But what of the future for the National Health Service for those who cannot afford an insurance scheme? Are we going to fall back on the kind of situation, which I can remember vividly, that existed before 1948, in which we had voluntary hospitals that could not pay their way and had to have Government help and in which the service left much to be desired? Are we going back to the kind of situation in which hospitals have to be maintained by charitable institutions, lotteries, and the like?—because this has been suggested; make no mistake about it, my Lords.
I want to refer for a few moments to the Royal Commission Report. I do not ask for answers to these points. I may well put them in question form, but that is simply because I want to emphasise to the Government the importance of these matters. The Royal Commission made a number of proposals: there must be removal of queue jumping through private medicine—so the Royal Commission was aware of it; there should be no change in the method of financing the National Health Service; and the National Health Service should provide equality of entitlement to health services. It said that the
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National Health Service should provide equality of access to all the services and a service free at the time of use, satisfy the reasonable expectations of its users and remain a national service to local needs.
I should like to emphasise a number of things that the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said and, if he does not mind, cross the proverbial "t"s and dot the proverbial "i"s. I think it would be helpful if the Secretary of State looked carefully at a number of things; for example, the cost of agency medical staff, which is phenomenal, and the saving which could be made in the cost of drugs. A pilot scheme could be started in this country in a defined area to find out what drugs were really necessary, and there could then be drawn up an approved list of inexpensive drugs, because I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, will agree that there is more than one drug available which will do a certain thing, some of them three or four times more expensive. I think we also need to look at the secretaries employed through agencies for administrative work. With agency secretaries there is no continuity, and they never get to know the staff, they never get to know the system, because they come and go through an agency. The amount of money that has to be paid to employ agency secretaries would warrant paying shorthand-typists in the National Health Service a bit more, so cutting out the need for secretaries from agencies.
My final point is this—and to this I should like an answer, but not necessarily today if the noble Lord or the noble Baroness feels that it is a flatter that cannot be dealt with today, as I am inclined to believe. I think we ought to look very carefully at the scope and function of the community health councils. It came to my notice only a few days ago that one community health council were so enraged at the cuts being imposed upon the area health authority through the regional health authority that they wanted to take legal action to see whether they could be stopped. Not surprisingly, they were told by the regional health authority that the money which the regional health authority gave the community health council was not for litigation—anything but. T have some sympathy with this view, but as I see it—and I

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may be quite wrong about this—the community health council is a public body, and public bodies are not prevented from taking some action. I think that this is an area which needs looking at, and I would be grateful if at some suitable time the noble Baroness or the noble Lord would look at it and let me know.
As I say, my Lords, I am sorry, in some respects, that I could not have sounded more cheerful; but after a good many years in politics, going back to the time when I sat on a committee, albeit a very humble committee, a very small committee, that was planning the National Health Service, I have yet to be convinced that, whether or not we have the money, from the present Government we are going to get a sincere and sustained attempt to give us the kind of National Health Service we should have, unless there is a conviction on their part that this is of supreme importance to the community.
Lord SOMERS: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I must take issue with him on one or two things that he has said—and the noble Baroness has kindly allowed me to intervene at this stage. I hesitate to do this because the noble Lord is a personal friend, and when he represented the Health Department in your Lordships' House nobody could have worked harder or been more conscientious, and we all admired him. But I must press him to believe that the old theory that all noble Lords who sit on this side of the House are wealthy landowners and all who sit on his side are poverty-stricken citizens is absolutely exploded by now.
Although I sit on these Cross-Benches I am a potential Conservative Peer, and, what is more, I am one of that obnoxious breed which I know is really allowed only on tolerance by that side of the House—an hereditary Peer. But I can assure the noble Lord that I have enjoyed the services of the National Health Service ever since they were founded, and I am thankful to say that if it were not for the services I received from them I would not be sitting in your Lordships' House today. I am a constant patient, and I have the very greatest admiration for the doctors who work in it. Naturally I know nothing about the private affairs of noble Lords who sit on the Government side of the House, but I think that if a secret ballot
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was taken the noble Lord would find that only about half a dozen enjoy the services of private doctors and private beds.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not think the noble Lord need apologise for intervening in any debate in this House. We can hold our friendhisps very sincerely and very dearly, but we can also take our politics very seriously, as well. I think it is one of the great joys of this House that we can say what we think, although I hope we always say it nicely. But I think the noble Lord is mistaken when he thinks that there are only about half a dozen Peers on the other side of the House who use private practice.
4.37 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of EDUCATION and SCIENCE (Baroness Young): My Lords, I am sure we are all very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for initiating and introducing this debate today. He has made a most perceptive and stimulating speech, and I was very glad to hear the constructive and realistic contribution that he made. It is appropriate that we should at this stage, at the start of the new Government's life, debate the National Health Service, and do so as we move into the 1980s. I should also like to wish the two maiden speakers good fortune in their speeches. I am sure they will go well, and we shall look forward to hearing both noble Lords on very many occasions.
My Lords, I would take as my starting point this afternoon what members of the Royal Commission have recently said about the National Health Service:
"In the course of our work we have seen things we have liked and admired, and things we have not liked at all. But our general view is that we need not feel ashamed of our health service and that there are many aspects of it of which we can be justly proud".
I think that this, in a very real and balanced way, sums up the position we find ourselves in today.
It is very easy to be critical and to say critical things about the state of the Health Service, and I shall be turning to some of those detailed points in a moment; but before doing so I should like to place on record my party's support of the National Health Service, and certainly our pledge, which we gave in Opposition

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and which we reiterate now, that it is our determination that in what we do we shall put the patients first. Many points will come up in the course of this debate today, and if they cannot be answered either by myself or by my noble friend Lord Cullen I give an assurance to the House that we will follow them up, that the proceedings will be read by my right honourable friend the Secrtary of State for Health and Social Services, and that we will of course write on matters which we cannot answer.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said that Britain spends less of its gross domestic product on health than many other countries in Europe. He is, of course, quite right. The truth is that the National Health Service is no longer the envy of the world, and the Royal Commission in fact showed that for every £100 spent on health care per head of population in Britain, the Netherlands, for example, spends £147, and West Germany, £158. The consequences are what we might expect, as for example in perinatal mortality, which is higher in England and Wales than in Norway, the Netherlands and France. Nobody can be pleased by this state of affairs, and all of us agree that we want to do something about it.
We on this side of the House would like not only to spend more on the Health Service, but we can only do so once we have succeeded in restoring the nation's prosperity. Really, our fundamental difficulty is the fact that, even today, our factories produce barely more than they did five years ago under the three-day week. Because we have not had the economic growth the National Health Service, as other public services, has suffered greatly. I do not believe that in these circumstance it is a very valuable contribution to have an interminable debate about whether or not we should or should not have private medicine.
I have spent enough time queueing up in hospitals to know quite well how some of the more difficult features of the National Health Service work. Having said all that, it is, I believe, a fact that only this year the Electrical, Electronic, Tele-communication, and Plumbing Union agreed with the electrical employers to provide private medical cover for 40,000 employees—and why not in a free society, if that
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is what they want to do! Really and truly, I do not think that debating who does or who does not have private medicine is a profitable use of our time. The fact is that we want to improve the National Health Service, and it is to that end that we should be addressing ourselves.
May I now turn to the economic situation facing the hospital service. The position is that health authorities are having to keep their expenditure about £125 mllion to £130 million below what they had planned to spend in order to keep within their cash limits. The reason for this is that we inherited a whole series of commitments on NHS pay but not alas! the wherewithal to meet them. We have agreed to honour the arrangements made by the previous Government and to increase health authority cash limits by most of the excess cost over the inadequate cover they had provided. This has already cost £250 million and with more to come. The previous Government had already told health authorities they could expect no increase in their cash limit to cover excess price inflation over the amount that had been provided. Faced by the need to foot the substantial increase in the NHS pay bill, and by the equally urgent need to reduce the borrowing requirement and the burden of direct taxation, we felt unable to go further than our predecessors. This has meant in consequence hard decisions by many health authorities, and I recognise that there have had to be reductions in services in some places. London has faced particular difficulties. In general, however, health authorities have responded very well to my right honourable friend's request to achieve economies with the minimum impact on patient services; they have done this by cutting back on new developments as well as by stringent housekeeping economies, and focusing any cuts as far as possible on expenditure not concerned with patient care.
The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, quoted our Manifesto. He said—and I accept this—that in our Manifesto we said that it was not our intention to reduce spending on the Health Service. I have just given the figures, and I accept that there has been a tight squeeze this year because of cash limits and the economic situation. However, as my noble friend said—and it is in the White

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Paper—the fact is that planned spending on the Health Service in 1980–81 will give an increase of about 3 per cent. in real terms for the two-year period since 1978–79. This increase will restore this year's squeeze and add the further ½ per cent. real growth previously planned for health authorities. The net cost of the NHS will rise to £7,904 million, about 11 per cent. of the total of Government expenditure. We believe that it is not right that users should not bear a reasonable share of the cost where they are able to pay. We have therefore made two further proposals. The limits on hospital costs for road traffic accident victims which can be recovered from vehicle insurers involved will go up from 1st April.
I think at this point I should answer the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, about prescription charges. We have accepted that prescription charges will be raised to 70p from 1st April 1980—representing roughly the same proportion of the total cost of a prescription as 20p did when that charge was introduced in 1971. There will continue to be arrangements for exempting the elderly, who will not have to pay; those under 16; those on supplementary benefits and other groups, such as expectant and nursing mothers. The prepayment certificates—which are colloquially called "season tickets"—for those needing frequent prescriptions, will continue on favourable rates. We recognise that many believe that treatment should be absolutely free at the time it is received. But we do not believe that the savings from increased charges—nearly £33 million next year—can be lost. Still less do we believe that we can afford to abandon charges altogether for those who are able to pay
As I have already indicated, we judge that the country cannot at present afford to devote more resources to the NHS if we are to restore the country to its economic prosperity. But we believe, as already indicated, that there is very considerable potential for making more efficient use of the resources that are available. The Government are seeking to reduce waste, bureaucracy and over-government across the whole range of public services including the NHS. I was particularly interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, had to say on health
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education for all of us, preventive medicine and generally his remarks on sensible living.
Before Christmas the Government will issue a consultative paper setting out their proposals to simplify and decentralise the Health Service, and reduce bureaucracy. This will pick up and respond to the Royal Commission's recommendations on these matters. I believe that the Government's general approach is well known. We shall propose a simplification of the existing structure; in some places there are in effect six tiers—the department, region, area, district, sector and unit. We shall also propose greater delegation of responsibility to those at the level at which services to patients are provided. I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, sees the consultative document, it will help him on some of the points that he made about the importance of involving people at the level of the community.
We shall be making our proposals in order to achieve a more effective and responsive service. We also believe that if our proposals are implemented, the service will be less costly. My right honourable friend the Minister of State at the Department of Health has said, in answer to a question in another place, that the long term aim should be to save 10 per cent. of the present cost of managing the service—that is, £30 million of the £300 million per year spent on management Some have dismissed this aim as wholly unrealistic. I would simply reply that some authorities have already shown that substantial savings are possible by simplifying their structure. Somerset, for example, expects to save over £200,000 a year as the result of changes implemented earlier this year.
However, we are not simply limited to the question of making structure and management more efficient. We are also reviewing a wide range of possibilities for making better use of resources, some of which—for example, the use of incentive budgeting—have been highlighted in the Royal Commission's report. If I may, I will give two examples of initiatives taken by the Department of Health over the past few months.
First, a research project is being undertaken in several health districts which is designed in part to help clinicians be

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more aware of the economic consequences of their clinical decisions. There is certainly no intention to infringe the tradition of clinical autonomy, but there is no denying that within a finite budget the use of unnecessarily expensive drugs or procedures in diagnosing and treating one patient means there is less to be spent on others. Experience so far shows that if given by management well presented information about the costs of procedures, drugs, et cetera, clinicians are sometimes able to save quite considerable sums without in any way reducing the quality of care they give their patients.
The second project is one designed to help relieve consultants of part of their burden of paperwork and administration generally, by giving administrative support to groups of consultants working as a clinical unit. Experience in one or two cases has shown that a relatively junior administrator can relieve consultants of much of the chores of scheduling their work, arranging admissions, and similar matters, giving them more time for clinical work. If the experiment now being undertaken in several districts proves valuable to the consultants concerned, this is one area of administration in which we shall want to encourage growth. Noble Lords may be assured that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will encourage initiatives to cut out waste and improve efficiency—and I shall of course draw the suggestions that will undoubtedly be made today to his attention.
I should now like to turn to another area in which concern has been expressed: that it the very important matter of industrial relations in the National Health Service. Not everybody realises that there are about one million employees in the National Health Service and that in fact it is the largest employer in the country. Of course, industrial relations in the National Health Service attract publicity. When they go wrong, industrial action threatens to harm people already vulnerable because of illness. Until relatively recently industrial action was almost unthinkable in the Health Service, with its traditions of service inherited from voluntary hospitals and other institutions. However, over the last 10 years there have been problems resulting primarily, I think, from two causes: first, as a pressure
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stemming from our relative national economic failure coupled with the application of rigid national pay policies. I think these cumulative facts have indeed had a very unhappy effect. Secondly, I believe it to be true that there has been a change of attitude in the National Health workforces and that management has found it very difficult to come to terms with this.
The present Government are most anxious to restore responsible collective bargaining within cash limits, so that settlements reached are, and can be seen to be, fair to the staff involved, to the service as a whole and to the taxpayer who foots the bill. Staff will not accept as fair public sector pay settlements markedly out of line with the private sector. Almost inevitably there must be some system of comparability, but the Government have not yet decided its shape in the long term. For the present the Clegg Commission continues to deal with references to it. Its recommendations on ancillaries and ambulance men have already been received and accepted. Its recommendations on nurses and midwives are expected early in the New Year. We hope that, through comparabilities and with the developing system of cash limits, reasonable settlements will be reached within the Whitley Council machinery, because the Government believe they can help by standing back from pay negotiations.
There is above all the clear need to foster good personnel and industrial relations at the local level. The Royal Commission made a number of pertinent recommendations. We believe the proposals for changes to the structure and management arrangements of the service, to which I referred earlier, will help and we shall be encouraging health authorities to develop ways of avoiding disruption of the normal flow of work in the National Health Service by avoiding disagreements through consultation and resolving those that arise through negotiation.
Finally, I should like to conclude by saying something about the importance we attach to volunteers and the whole of the voluntary movement in the hospital service. The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, drew our attention to this and I think we are all very grateful not only to the Leagues of Hospital Friends but to the

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many people who do voluntary work in connection with hospitals.
A particular point has arisen, and that is the use of volunteers during industrial disputes. It is during industrial disputes in the National Health Service that the general public can have a role to play. Unlike the management of an industrial concern, NHS management cannot contemplate a shut down during a strike and basic essential clinical services must be maintained. Where these services are threatened by industrial action, National Health Service management must take other measures; and last winter saw heroic measures made by other groups of staff to cover for absent strikers. Nurses were cleaning wards, administrators were stoking boilers and doctors were acting as porters. However, the Government believe it is unfair to the other groups of staff to expect them to pick up all the pieces. We made our position clear when in Opposition last winter and we now believe, and we say again today, that National Health Service management must be and are free to make whatever use of volunteers from the general public they can. Perhaps alone among public services, the NHS always gets a spontaneous response from the public at times of crisis. We believe that the NHS management should be able to tap this fund of goodwill. But, of course, it is not only at times of crisis that volunteers have an important role to play and we support what they can do to complement the National Health Service.
There are many speakers today and many experts will be speaking. My noble friend Lord Cullen will be winding up for the Government and will be answering many of the points that are raised; but I should like to say finally that we believe in the importance of getting the best use of resources for the National Health Service. We accept—and I understand there are between 78 and 80 different professions involved in the National Health Service—how much we depend on all these people. I should like to pay my tribute to the many thousands of people who work in the National Health Service, who give to so many of us of their time, of their skills and of their efforts. All of them are needed to make the Service a success and each one is dependent upon the other. I hope we shall have this sense of belonging to a great service which we all want to
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support. It is for these reasons that I and my colleagues welcome this debate today, the interest of your Lordships, and the expert knowledge which you can bring to this debate.
4.57 p.m.
The Earl of ERNE: My Lords, I hope your Lordships will give me the indulgence of the House during my maiden speech. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for having raised this important question and for giving me the opportunity of addressing your Lordships for the first time.
My interest in the question stems from my being a member of the Western Health and Social Services Board in Northern Ireland. The geographical area for which the Board is responsible includes my home county of Fermanagh, which is the most western county in the United Kingdom. It is an extremely remote county, consisting of small farms, forests, moors and lakes. It has a scattered population of 50,000, with some modest industrial development in three major towns.
We read with interest about developments in medical science in such fields as heart surgery, brain surgery, and radio-therapy; and we are pleased that these services are available to us at our regional hospitals in Belfast. However, we are much more concerned about our local services and we wonder whether those who plan in the National Health Service and in particular those who influence professional training, may be rather too obsessed by the views expressed in the cities and in the "centres of excellence" and whether perhaps they tend to overlook the somewhat different needs of those of us who live in rural areas.
I am informed, for example, that pharmacists and opticians are now required to undertake a university degree course rather than attending a local part-time course as they used to do. One wonders whether they may be more inclined to seek employment in the hospital service in research or in industry rather than to engage in retail pharmacy or eye-testing in small country towns and villages. It is certainly becoming more difficult to attract graduates into retail pharmacies, with the result that many chemists' shops are closing and smaller communities are losing this essential part of our Health Service. Similarly, I believe that the

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entry of doctors to general practice is seen to be the subject of regulations imposing compulsory vocational training, which in itself is most desirable so long as that training is not concentrated in the teaching hospitals and the larger centres.
I view with some concern the move towards group practices and financial incentives available to those who work in them. I should hope that some corresponding incentive would be made available to those doctors who undertake the much more demanding duties of providing single-handed medical care to village practices—practices which are still common and which are so much more appreciated in my part of the country.
Finally, I should like to speak with some feeling about two local matters. First, as has been mentioned before, the overall death rate in the West is similar to that of the rest of the Province although the birth rate is appreciably higher. However, the infant mortality rate and the perinatal mortality rate is the highest in the whole of the British Isles. This is due partly to social and economic reasons—high unemployment; a high proportion of families receiving social security benefits, combined with relatively poor housing—and partly to the lack of sufficient paediatric services.
The second local matter to which I should like to refer concerns our county hospital, the Erne Hospital in Enniskillen. This is a modern acute hospital with 215 beds, providing an excellent service to our isolated community. In common with many hospitals of this size, it has been experiencing difficulties in attracting medical staff and in providing acute services. The Western Health and Social Services Board has recently carried out a comprehensive study of our hospitals, under the chairmanship of Dr. Gordon, and has now issued a report in the form of a consultative document. This recommends that the Erne Hospital should be extended to take a larger population and thereby justify increased staffing levels, which should ensure a more reliable service. I feel that it is essential for County Fermanagh to retain and develop this acute hospital, and I fully endorse this recommendation. I hasten to add that my support for this recommendation is not due to the fact that this hospital
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shares my name, but is because it is so geographically situated as to meet the needs of the majority of our scattered community. I should like to end by saying that I sincerely hope that adequate hospital services will be retained in neighbouring areas until such time as communications have been considerably improved.
5.3 p.m.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, may I be the first to congratulate the noble Earl on his maiden speech, which I found very interesting, and also to thank him for what he said because his speech will fit in very well with mine. I say that because he was speaking for a rural area, while I, of course, am speaking as a GP in a very deprived inner city area, but I am a single-handed practitioner. I started this practice in 1950 and saw it grow. I saw the first patient come in. Before that, I worked as an assistant in a general practice in Chiswick, and prior to that I was locum in Sydenham and in Newcastle. I was in at the inception of the National Health Service, though at that time I was only a locum. So I have seen the service grow.
I want to start by talking about general practice and then move on to other things. My practice was built by my wife and myself, she being my unpaid secretary as most doctors' wives are. But, of course, the stage has now been reached where a doctor in my position is allowed to employ up to two people, for which the State pays 70 per cent. of the cost of employing them. So we have moved a long way there. We have also moved to the stage where there is no question of my not being able to get pathology services from the hospitals around me. There is no question of my needing to send my patient to a consultant before he is X-rayed. I can get radiological services from the hospitals around me. I can also get physiotherapy services from the hospitals around me. So we are moving well forward there, too. In any general practice at the moment one can get an attachment to a health visitor and one works closely with social workers, because it is always possible to be in touch with those people in the area. Therefore, over the period that I have practised in this deprived area I have seen the benefits of the Health Service improve consider-

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ably, so far as primary health care is concerned
The area has changed out of all recognition during my period there, and of course, as in all such areas, I have the usual problems of drug addicts, alcoholics and the like. There is also the continuous problem of homelessness. Perhaps that explains to your Lordships why I so often speak on housing in this House. We could move further in improving primary health care if we improved housing, because a lot of the patients who go to hospital do so because it is not possible to nurse them at hime, as their home conditions do not allow it. Again, we could improve to a tremendous extent the turnover in our hospitals if people could be sent home earlier. There could be more day surgeries and things of that sort. But those matters are tied up with improving the housing in areas such as the one in which I practise. In addition to that, I represented another deprived area at County Hall for 16 years. So I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if most of my speech this afternoon is probably critical. It is because I am really talking about what has been happening to these deprived areas in London, so far as Health Service matters are concerned.
When I started my practice, one of the attractions of the area was that there were a large number of teaching hospitals around me. That is one of the reasons why I started there, even though it was a very congested area and other doctors were there. I was taking a big chance when I put my name on the door and waited. When I knew that we were having this debate today, I made contact with those teaching hospitals and found that they had terrific problems, most of which are the result of the resource allocation scheme which has been followed. As I listened to them, I thought that I was back in County Hall, because the way in which London has been treated in the resource allocation scheme is very much like the way in which London is treated in the rate support grant.
London never gets its fair share of the rate support grant. What happens is that it is agreed that the rate support grant should be 61 per cent. but then there is a claw-back. The theory is that London has more resources than the rest of the country and can therefore meet its
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problems more easily. To some extent that is true; both the City of London and the City of Westminster are quite rich. But poor people live in the City of Westminster. In fact quite a lot of poor people live in Paddington and they have to bear the consequences of those sort of decisions. What is worse is that the East End of London, which is a poor area, usually has to pay these high rates because of the decision that other parts of the country—which are, in fact, much wealthier than these areas of London—ought to receive more of the resources, since London is better able to take care of itself. That is the basis of this iniquitous way in which the rate support grant is usually distributed.
I get the feeling that the same sort of thing happens with the resource allocation scheme and that, as a consequence, London is having a rough time. London does have more teaching hospitals than most parts of the country, but London also has problems which are greater than those in many other parts of the country. Teaching hospitals develop special units, special services. Those services usually serve not just the area, district or region in which the hospital is situated. More often than not, those hospital services serve large areas—areas well outside London. This is one point which nobody seems to bear in mind when it comes to the total allocation of resources for London. Nobody has a clear conception of the cost of these special referral units which exist in London but which serve people who do not live in London. What happens is that the regional health authorities nominate regional specialties and they allocate funds for them. Since, however, as I said earlier, they are not too clear about their exact cost, the allocation is never adequate.
One of the suggestions I want to make to the Government is that in looking at the National Health Service—as, obviously they are doing at the moment—the question of more central funding of some of these special units should be seriously considered. May I give your Lordships an example of something that bears out the point in a very clear way. The Royal Free Hospital has a haemophilia unit which costs £10,000 per patient per day. That unit does not serve merely Hampstead; it serves a very much larger area than even the North-West Thames

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area. Such a unit should be centrally funded because I was told that to treat one individual has cost that hospital £100,000. Now £100,000 paid from central funds may not be too heavy a burden, but £100,000 paid by the North Camden district is a terrific sum. Even if, as happened, the region meets a large part of that sum, a great deal of expenditure still falls on North Camden, expenditure which it ought not to be made to bear.
I am using this example to illustrate the point that one needs to look a little more closely at the degree to which there can be central funding. I know that there is a certain amount of central funding. For example, Coppetts Wood is a Lassa fever specialist unit, and that is being centrally funded. This is the same sort of thing as the haemophilia unit when it comes to expense. However, there are many other units besides Coppetts Wood which need to be centrally funded and not left to be funded by the local or the regional authority.
Another point about London is the cost of the nurses. I am always hearing that we must not have agency nurses, but the truth of the matter is that most London hospitals have trouble getting nurses because of the accommodation problem and because of the cost of living in London. Although there is London weighting, it does not really meet the cost of living in London. Therefore, many of these hospitals can maintain their services only by using agency nurses. When, frequently, I hear that we must reduce the incidence of the use of agency nurses, I have to say, "Think again", for sometimes this is the only way to meet the needs of a particular hospital.
I said earlier that I would concentrate on some criticisms. The other side of my story is the question of the area: which I represented in County Hall. I am referring now to the London Borough of Hackney. Recently, the Hackney Borough Council took the decision to withdraw its representatives from the area health authority. I am sure the noble Lord knows that. It was a very serious decision for a borough council to take. In fact, they discussed their action with the other borough councils involved, who were sympathetic but who were not prepared to take the same action.
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I have spent some time today trying to get at the facts behind their decision to withdraw from the area health authority. The borough council told me that they withdrew from the area health authority because Hackney's interests were not being safeguarded. They told me that 250 acute beds have been closed in Hackney since 1976. The Metropolitan Hospital has been closed; the acute functioning of the German Hospital has been closed. Hackney and St. Leonards are the only hospitals left in Hackney. When they retired from the area health authority it was because there was a proposal to close St. Leonards Hospital. In fact, St. Leonards Hospital has not been closed, although the performance of its accident and emergency wards has been reduced. They function only from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., which means that St. Leonards is not so useful to the people of Hackney as it once was or was expected to be.
The borough council also found that although Barts was expected to take the extra work as a result of the closure of these other hospitals, Barts itself was having to close beds. In 1976, Barts closed 40 beds which have never been reopened, and recently the hospital has been made to close a further 78 beds. They found, too, that the Prince of Wales and the Royal Northern Hospitals—which are not in their area but just on the border and which can therefore be used—were under the threat of having their accident and emergency services closed. They gave me a number of other details but I will not weary your Lordships with those because time is passing. When the suggestion was made that we should also close St. Leonards they decided that they had had enough and Hackney withdrew from the area health authority.
This is a serious matter and I have used it to illustrate the point I was making. It is quite easy to say that London has a surfeit of hospital beds. The truth of the matter is that the hospital beds in London serve more than merely the people of London. What is more significant, however, is that the reductions in the allocation to London are in the poor areas of London. Therefore although as a consequence it may well have helped some other poor area in the rest of the country it will certainly have done harm to one of the poorer areas of London.

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I have made this case at length because I want the Minister, when he is thinking in terms of next year's extra 3 per cent. to think more carefully of how much of that can go to areas such as the East End of London, because what is really required—and Merrison actually said it—is an improvement in the resource allocation scheme. It is not—certainly so far as London is concerned and it is London that I know about—doing the good that one hoped it would in the long term. In fact, it is doing a lot of harm.
I do not want to burden your Lordships for longer than I need to. There are many other things that I wanted to say but I want to draw the attention of the Minister to two threatened closures, one of which in fact is not taking place—that is, the closure of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital, which I now know will not take place. The other is the threatened closure of St. Columba's Hospital which is the hospital for terminal cancer up in Spaniards Road in Hampstead, which I gather the area authority of Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster are threatening to close because they cannot see why they should be spending money on people who in fact do not come from their area. That was one of the points that I was making earlier.
In the case of the EGA, I know that it is to be reopened but it is to be reopened as a gynaecological hospital, with day patients, 12 beds, a proper out-patient department and an early diagnostic unit, which will be useful for screening for cancer of the cervix, the breast, and so on, and possibly screening as a means of preventive medicine and some health education. All this is quite good but I think the Department misses the point. The EGA was a hospital where women who were sensitive about being treated by men were able to go to be treated by women and it is not only for gynaecological treatment that women feel they need to go to women doctors. The whole ethic behind the agreement to reopen the EGA as a gynaecological hospital suggests that that is the only reason why women want to go to women doctors. That is not true. There are a lot of women who prefer to have women doctors—just as, of course, there are a lot of women who prefer to have men doctors. I would not have said, for example, that it was necessary to
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build a new EGA, but you have the EGA and therefore you should keep it.
What is more, we are now turning out more women doctors than we did before and we need to know how best to use them. I should have thought that what the Government would be interested in doing is using the EGA to enable them to see how best to use women doctors. I am referring to such things as where part-time working can fit in, and so on, because one could do that with a hospital like the EGA which is served by women doctors for women patients. That could give a very good idea of how to fit women generally into the other hospitals in the country.
I have spoken for far too long so I will conclude by just making two points. First, my own view, having given some time to studying what is happening, is that there is more need for local influence on decisions. That is my firm conviction. I intended to take a few minutes to comment on Dr. Owen's suggestion that we should elect the health authority. I will not do that at the moment because already I have spoken for too long, but I think it is something that ought to be taken on board. Obviously it could not be done now—and here I come back to my local authority theme, which I to not like to do so often—unless one had local income tax. It could not be done on the rates. Therefore it is long and not short term, but it is worth thinking about.
The second point concerns the community health councils. One should strengthen them—and I notice again that Merrison suggests that—because they ought to be, and what is more they can be, a good thermometer of what the public want and, since they will know what resources are available, they would be useful vehicles for enabling the viewpoint of the public to be taken into account when decisions are being made. Therefore I hope that more use will be made of community health councils, and I hope the Minister will not pursue the line that he has taken, for example, when he told one of the regional hospital authorities that the statutory provision that there should be three months' delay before the services were withdrawn, in order to have consultation, can be waived because there is an emergency. I hope that emergency excuse will not he used for too long because I do not think it would be a

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good thing for us to start making changes and ignoring the local pressures which can come from community health councils and which can be for good.
I had intended to make some remarks on industrial relations, but I will only say one thing. What one needs is sensible machinery, but in the end what one needs are arbitration situations and arbitration which can be accepted. The doctors have a review body, and so do the dentists, for their pay. It is worth giving serious thought to having a similar set-up for the rest of the Health Service. That said, I may add that if that is going to be done there must not be an arbitrary rejection of the report by the Government of the day, as we have had sometimes with the doctors' review body. What we must have is arbitration machinery which, as employers, the Government would be willing to accept; and if the Government accept the machinery and its awards I think it will be found that the employees will also accept the machinery and the awards.
I am sorry that I have spoken for much longer than I had intended to, but there are many things in connection with the Health Service about which I feel strongly. On this occasion I felt that I had to put the case for Hackney. When I was told of the action they had taken, which I regarded as very strong action for any borough council to take, I thought I ought to find out what it was and why they did it, and that your Lordships ought to know.
5.30 p.m.
Baroness RYDER of WARSAW: My Lords, I crave the indulgence of your Lordships in addressing your Lordships' House for the first time. Also I am a newcomer, but I am moved, especially on this occasion today, to speak, if I may, for the silent sufferers in society whom I feel so deeply about. From the very wide spectrum of the problems among the handicapped and disabled I wish to confine myself to adults and children with cancer. Their lack of care constitutes one of the biggest gaps in our society. I refer in particular to people who receive, when possible, surgery and treatment. While some return to a full life, others realise with some alarm that they have entered a twilight world.
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The real problem arises when they must be discharged from hospital because they are blocking an acute bed needed for many others. Then these people for whom I speak are often left to their own devices. So long as patients need medical nursing care in hospital they are the responsibility of the National Health Service. It is not unknown that a general practitioner has neither the time nor the facilities in his busy practice to visit as frequently needed. Many patients are often in great distress, in need of constant support, full nursing care for 24 hours, and on pain killers. How can the average person with no nursing experience and with a family, perhaps with young children, when the husband or wife must go out to work, cope? Equally, how can a single person alone, often lonely, also cope? Whatever the patients' condition they fully deserve compassion, hope, love and dignity in death.
What is to be done? The average cost in my own foundation homes in Britain is between £90 and £120 per week per person, substantially less than the cost of a National Health Service bed. Is it fair, therefore, that we must raise funds both for capital and running costs? The one positive and clear point which emerges while these financial difficulties continue for the Government is that the public at large should be better informed, and from an early age in schools, too. We may rally them. In this way we give the public the opportunity of responding in a far greater and more effective way, based on our long tradition in Britain of giving voluntary service. Any discouragement of such voluntary efforts, of which my own is one, must be a most important factor to the Government as to when they make their cuts and where.
Is this help going to be sufficient? I can only say to your Lordships that it is daily a long hard struggle, but we cannot and will not turn our backs upon these needs, which are growing. To illustrate these needs, may I mention the boy Timothy, aged 11, whose illness was prolonged and painful. His parents were devoted to him. He had a great fear of hospitals and needles. He finally had to be admitted to hospital at Christmas time. The staff there were marvellous and gave him a tree and presents. But he would have benefited so much more in a more

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homely place and environment, out of the hospital atmosphere. He died, and later his mother died too.
Mr. N., aged 62, has had carcinoma of the bowel. This patient had constant discharge because of his malignant condition and lived in a house where there was no sanitation and no drainage, not uncommon in his part of the country. His wife was near to a nervous breakdown. Mrs. H., aged 49, had a spinal tumour and lived in a terraced house. She slept in a bed in the kitchen. Both her lodgers and neighbours tried to look after her. Conditions became deplorable and she needed long-term nursing care.
The four London regions are especially hit by the lack of resources. Successive Secretaries of State, including David Ennals and Patrick Jenkin, wrote to regional and area health authorities to encourage them wherever possible to help voluntary organisations, including the Sue Ryder Foundation, but, alas! the financial situation has, with very few exceptions, precluded this help. The warning lights came on early in the 1970s. The axe is falling upon social services, too, because there is no guarantee, due to cuts in public spending, that an individual in great need will be sponsored for his maintenance.
I am deeply aware of the financial crisis facing the Government. Moreover, every aspect of medicine has a huge priority; the field is so wide and the gaps so great. So, alas! we can but plug a few to meet the many. Charitable foundations here should always work, as abroad, together in harness with the Government. For three years the Foundation has benefited from the job creation programme, enabling us to use good unemployed tradesmen and labourers and thus provide the Foundation with an extra 134 beds for short and long-term treatment and nursing care. Now this scheme, too, referred to as STEP, is apparently denied us at the end of 1979.
My Lords, I am not here only to complain, but to speak for those who are hidden and sick in society. I have tried to stress the urgency for more assistance from the public and ordinary individuals to meet these tragic needs. I am reminded of the lines written by an Irish poet:
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"Who would once more relight creation's flame
Turn back to sanity a world that goes insane
To bridge this awful chasm of despair
The faint small voice of hope calls out
Do you answer, will you dare?"
5.37 p.m.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, I feel it a special privilege to be in a position to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder. A maiden speech is a formidable task, and I know she spoke at short notice; but she has accomplished it with exceptional excellence and commendable brevity. She speaks with a formidable and long record of public service, exceptional service to the sick and disabled, and her name is known worldwide. This House is richer for having her with us, and I know we would all wish to hear her often on health and other matters. I should like to add my congratulations also the the noble Earl, Lord Erne, whose personal expertise and experience will be of great value to this House, particularly as he comes from Northern Ireland. I should like to apologise personally that I will not be able to stay to the end of the debate as I have to go to another appointment. I can only excuse myself by saying that I have not had to do that before.
My Lords, before criticising the Health Service one must first accept that many hospitals run very smoothly, efficiently, have flexible working by all, have good will and good management, and in spite of all the difficulties they are thoroughly appreciated by the patients, whom it is all about. But, because that is so, it is no reason for not looking at some of those other hospitals where those conditions do not apply. Whatever I may say does not reflect on those hospitals that are run well and are a credit to the nation.
There is a great deal wrong with the service. Over the past five years the waiting-list for admission to hospital rose from half a million to three-quarters of a million, which is surprising considering the huge increase of staff and resources categorised by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. In his speech—which I am sorry to say I considered to be a bit of class war-fare—he mentioned his hatred of private medicine. For one thing, he does not seem to be aware of the machines which were provided by private medicine and which then became available to National

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Health Service patients. He also seemed to forget that whether for Peers, people, or for the union man, private health is paid for by insurance policies for which premiums have been paid. Others may have preferred to spend those premiums on beer. It is a question of choice.
The morale of the service dropped, so that a combination of lack of discipline and weak management, caused by over-protective conditions of employment, led to the situation where the ancillary workers were almost able to bring the service to a halt last winter. The situation of ancillary workers trying to dictate terms by which the service will operate continues to this day.
We now have the cuts and the great question is where they should fall. The Government have suggested several areas for economies—for example, raising prescriptions to realistic figures; charging for traffic casualties; the abolition of the Health Services Board and general good housekeeping. But after that eventually comes jobs, and how will that affect the service? NUPE says: No cuts or the patient will suffer—no cuts, above all, to ancillary staff. Yet, who are these ancillary workers who are now complaining about cuts and insisting that patients will suffer? How have many of them shown—and how do they show—their concern for the patient? We saw how ancillary workers almost brought the Health Service to a halt last winter when they went on strike. At that time management were afraid to be tough and afraid to let volunteers do the jobs. Patients had to be turned away. Even last month at Great Ormond Street Hospital a spreading, irresponsible strike of porters stopped admissions. The strike was caused by the suspension of a shop steward who became involved in a birthday party punch-up. I have in my possession the Press cuttings concerning that dispute. One employee at a hospital is reputed to have said:
"People die every day: what difference does it make if a few more die".
At another hospital a drunk porter on a ward was suspended on full pay pending inquiry and that caused an immediate strike by all the other ancillary staff at the hospital; cases of refusal to carry out their jobs; refusal to leave a canteen to help
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a 90-year-old woman from an X-ray table and repeated foul abuse to a hospital secretary. There were many examples, and these are just some examples of how some of them behaved. Yet management's hands were tied. Then came the strike. What did doctors find? I refer to a quotation from the Daily Telegraph. It says:
"There is a further lesson which the dispute has taught us, namely that the hospitals are quieter and function more efficiently when many of these workers are away. We have known for a long time that there are too many ancillary staff for the available work".
Hospitals varied and some suffered more than others; certainly not all had to put up with the monstrous behaviour that I have started to quote. No doubt there are many hospitals where relations with ancillary staff are excellent. But since the strike, in the bad hospitals, nothing has changed except some lessons have been learnt by management who have found themselves able to take a tougher line. Where four men have turned up to do two men's work, two men have been sent home, and where management has shown resolution the situation has improved.
But it is necessary that the Government should speedily amend existing legislation so that those comparatively few disruptive, destructive and non-working workers, who bring disrepute to their hardworking fellow workers, can be removed from the service. There are many economies that could be made—altering shifts and breaking some old traditions; but often the men will not even meet management to discuss the matter, in spite of the attempts by management to get them to talk.
It is traditional that the ancillary staff work a great deal of overtime—a relic of the days of low pay. Now it is difficult to reduce overtime, yet it is very expensive and should not be necessary and its reduction could result in a large economy. So progress to economies that would benefit patients, the economy and in the long run the staff, is often hard and the complicated complaints procedure to achieve dismissal is so heavily loaded in favour of the bad worker as to make discipline very hard to apply. Doctors still have to wheel patients into lifts because the porters are too long in coming. Of course, those conditions vary and there will be hospitals where ancillary staff are hugely co-operative. That does not alter

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the facts of the examples that I have quoted. Nurses still have to undertake menial tasks that should be carried out by ancillary workers employed for that purpose. They still have to re-do work badly done by ancillary workers. All the time spent by doctors and nurses sorting out these problems is time taken from looking after patients. All that behaviour saps the moral of the whole service.
In addition, the effects of the reorganisation have only added to the problems: dividing nursing from administration; removing the matron and substituting numbered heads; and removing authority—the authority where the buck stops. Nurses used to have time to talk to patients and used to control diet. Since reorganization that is often done by orderlies and often their attitude is impersonal and they have no concern for the patient's welfare. Nurses who have responsibilities to the patients see their pay rates vastly overshadowed by those of administrative staff who have regular hours. Little wonder that trained nurses move to administration and leave a shortage on the wards. Operating theatres close at five o'clock for lack of staff and trained nurses who have gone into administration. It is not surprising what there is a long waiting-list for operations. Yet, one writer states, when referring to administrators before and after the reorganisation:
"I worked in a hospital of 150 beds and the assistant matron ordered and distributed stores to kitchens and wards. When she was off-duty it was my job, and we were also doing nursing administrative work.
"Soon after stated take-over, a man was installed in the stores with a large new desk and large stock book. Soon after that he got a male assistant.
"In the local hospital in Huddersfield, the boardroom was taken over by office staff and soon after that a ward was closed to accommodate more office staff.
"One consultant may have a secretary of his own. Before takeover, one secretary worked for two or even three consultants".
I believe that there are now far too many over-protected administrative and ancillary staff. They could be drasticaly pruned without any damage to the patient and probably to the benefit of the morale and smooth running of the service.
Now NUPE challenges the present cuts as being detrimental to the patients and the service. Yet its notices in hospitals read, "Stop cuts and save jobs". It is
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hypocrisy for them to suggest that they are interested in patients—it is only their jobs that they want. Yet a hospital is not a factory or a job creation scheme: it is for sick people and they should be looked after by people who are dedicated. Yet many workers feel that they are in a factory and act with total unconcern for the patients. No one is forcing them to work in a hospital and they should leave and work with inanimate objects.
I believe that economies can and must be made by reducing administrative and ancillary staff. The Government must consider whether or not to return to pre-Salmon conditions; scrap the administrative build up; put back the matron with her supreme authority; increase the sphere of the nurses and pay them more for doing so.
For all its faults of overmanning, we have in this country exceptional talent in our doctors, we have dedicated nurses and a service sought by foreigners from all over the world and one that gives our own country great service. However, I hope and believe that the philosophy of this Government will succeed in making the most of that talent and dedication, in raising morale and in paring down that part of the service that is overmanned and constitutes a drain to those dedicated to providing a great service.
5.50 p.m.
Baroness MASHAM of ILTON: My Lords, I too should like to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Erne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw, on their sincere and admirable speeches. I have tremendous admiration for the work that the noble Baroness has done; on one occasion I visited one of her homes in Yorkshire and met a Polish girl who had been raped 28 times. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for bringing this debate to your Lordships' House at this time.
Remembrance Sunday has just passed, when I am sure many of your Lordships remembered the souls of the Servicemen who died in the two world wars. My noble friend Lady Darcy de Knayth and the noble Earl, my husband, both lost their fathers serving for this country, as I am sure did many other sons of your Lordships' House. Many men lived,

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but remained paralysed from their wounds. It was because of those casualties that the Ministry of Pensions started the National Spinal Injuries Unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1944. It was under the medical direction of Dr. Ludwig Guttman, who revolutionised the treatment of paraplegics. Before that time paraplegics had been considered hopeless cases and generally died in the first few months from urinary tract infection or sepsis from infected pressure sores. The routine then became to turn patients every two or three hours night and day; the treatment of infections; and intensive physiotherapy and rehabilitation to teach the patients that they could again return to society and take up useful employment.
In 1952 that unit went into the National Health Service serving the whole of the South of England and, being the National Spinal Injuries Centre, taking patients from all parts of the country. Priority has always been given to Service personnel. The hospital was built by Canadians in 1939–40 as a temporary emergency hospital. It was meant to last about 10 years. The patching-up process stopped about eight years ago when a new hospital was to have been built. This has never materialised and the wards are still housed in flimsy old nissen huts.
The North of England, mainly because of the mining industry, established spinal units when the treatment at Stoke Mandeville had been proved to be effective. The sooner the spinal patient is got to a special unit, the sooner he is returned to the community. Apart from this being by far the best treatment for the patient, it is always the most cost-effective method to the National Health Service. It has been proved time and time again that the hospitals that hold on to their spinal patients and do not refer them to a special unit run into endless problems. Pressure sores develop due to the ward routine not being geared to the spinal patients; urinary and blood conditions arise as many doctors do not expect the complications; contractures of the limbs occur, as often in general hospitals there are not sufficient physiotherapists to treat patients of this sort; and depression of the patients, and their relatives, develops because they become specially difficult patients, as everything starts to go wrong.
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In a spinal unit there is always someone worse than oneself. I can assure noble Lords that a depressed patient with pressure sores is much more difficult to rehabilitate, and it takes months of unnecessary hospital time to heal the sores that should not develop. Over the years I have had desperate calls from paraplegic patients or their relatives, who have been landed in general hospitals. One was from a young man who had broken his neck while at borstal doing gymnastics. After treatment in a spinal unit he went home; some time after that he developed pneumonia. That was cured, but a massive pressure sore developed because he had not been turned, even though he had asked to be turned. A note written by a student nurse which came into my possession reads:
"Sue, if you don't get me out of here, I will die".
It was signed "John". Another example is of a man who had been in a general hospital for 18 months paralysed from the waist down. His mother called me in as her son had tried to commit suicide because of depression. He had terrible sores and contractures and rehabilitation had not started. Both these men needed a voice to speak for them. They went to spinal units and, after years of treatment for their desperate conditions, they are now married and living in the community.
In 1970 I tried to get the Government to make spinal injuries resulting in paralysis a notifiable condition. This would have helped the Government to carry out research into where and why such injuries occur. In the past few years it has been evident that the Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital has become overstressed and understaffed, and there has been an increasing inability by the National Health Service to meet the needs of patients belonging to that unit who needed check-ups and on-going care. The National Health Service was failing in its duty to patients.
At the spinal units in North of England I could see patients being called back for check-ups and IVP's on a routine basis every year for a review, and every two years for a thorough check. That is good preventative medicine and money well spent, as serious complications can take months in hospital to put right once a condition takes hold. That was unable to happen at Stoke Mandeville

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Hospital which has about 6,000 patients on its books.
Last year I visited the spinal unit with Patrick Jenkin, the then shadow spokesman for health. He saw the conditions for himself. With the snows of last winter several of the spinal wards' roofs fell in. I visited the unit again on 1st February, this time with Timothy Raison, the Member of Parliament for that constituency. Two of the wards were closed as the ceilings had fallen in on top of patients. Outside the operating theatre in the main corridor a large bulge in the ceiling had been incised by a surgeon so that the water dripped into a bucket, rather than the whole ceiling should fall down and cause a major disaster.
On 7th November a meeting was held by the area health authority to decide whether or not to cut a further ward from the Spinal Injuries Unit, when already the DHSS knows that there are 100 spinal beds short in the South of England and that two proposed much-needed units have not yet been built. The ex-patients could take no more. On 7th November they moved in and had a sit-in to show how strongly they felt. Their placards read such slogans as: "Enough is enough" and a paralysed soldier said "We fought for you. Now fight for us". The whole country knows about this: most newspapers reported it, and the television showed the nation just how serious the situation is.
At a conference on 19th September held by the National Association of Health Authorities in England and Wales the Secretary of State, Dr. Gerald Vaughan, said:
"We have taken on board the Royal Com- mission's point that people must not be left in an agony of indecision and uncertainty about their future"
Dr. Vaughan is to visit Stoke Mandeville Hospital on the 20th of this month. This is just what he will find. He will also find a spinal unit serving a vast part of England, funded by one area. This point has already been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, who has stressed, as I have, that funding of these special units should be done nationally. Without direct Government reorganisation there will be a disastrous effect on many patients in this part of Buckinghamshire. With a growth rate of 18,000 patients, and a lag of two years' allocation of resources for the current year, the fact
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that the Aylesbury and Milton Keynes health district has the most rapidly rising population in the country means that the problems are exacerbated. Already they have a waiting-list of almost 5,500 patients of various surgical conditions, and the Government have told this area to cut services to patients. This district by circumstance of fate, is supposed to run the National Spinal Injuries Unit.
The unit in theory is supposed to bring in extra resources for patients treated from outside the region, but in practice this has not happened. I should like to ask the Government what has happened to these extra resources. Would it not be wiser for the Government to treat the national unit as a national responsibility and collect the funds from the various regions and fund the district direct from the DHSS? These vital resources for the National Spinal Injuries Centre are being swallowed up by the Oxford Region, and are not going to where they belong.
The Spinal Injuries Association, of which I am chairman, does all it can to help and support the patients and their relatives with spinal injuries. We have written several books to help both sufferers and professionals. We are at present about to publish one on the first 48 hours of nursing care for spinal cord patients. We have three members of staff working flat out, and a voluntary management committee. As a voluntary organisation we shall do all we can to help the Government to keep up the standards of spinal care in this country. The need is urgent.
On the 29th March this year I put a Question to Her Majesty's Government asking:
whether they will ensure that in future volunteers will be able to help in hospitals during emergencies so that patients are protected "—[Official Report; col. 1652.]
Should it not be a human right of all patients who are under the care of Her Majesty's Government that they are well looked after? My Question of 29th March got support from all sides of the House. The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, said:
"where a robust attitude was taken locally, volunteers were warmly welcomed".—[col. 1654]
We all know that some local authorities are much stronger and better than others. The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, told

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the House that there were some volunteers who had not been able to get through picket lines. The noble Lord, Lord Carr of Hadley, asked:
"Should it not be possible for people to get through picket lines?"
He went on to say:
"People should always be allowed through picket lines. Picketing is the right peacefully to inform and persuade. If the present law is unenforceable, it should be changed".—[col. 1656]
The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, said:
"we have a number of plans which we propose to put into operation as soon as possible after 9th May".—[Col. 1655.]
His party did not get back into power. May I now ask this Government what they intend to do? Can they negotiate a clear policy so that guidelines are put out throughout the country? Negotiations should be, I feel, with Government, unions, and voluntary bodies dealing with volunteers. Surely it is in the Geneva Convention that patients should be protected.
Coming from the poorer North, as I do, I should like to bring to your Lordships' notice the concern from a few people that the proposed new contract for consultants will not benefit patients in the deprived areas. The new contract proposes to encourage private practice. I am all for free enterprise and incentives, but not at the expense of the poor areas where good health needs are so great. I should like to quote to your Lordships from a letter in the British Medical Journal:
"The Secretary of State should remember that one of his tasks is to safeguard the National Health Service. It is not his duty to subsidise private practice".
There are many full-time consultants in places or specialties which do not attract private patients, and these consultants are unfairly treated in the new contract. It looks as if the bright young consultants, with young families to educate and support, will be encouraged away from the poor northern areas to the places where there is scope for a thriving private practice. I hope that we do not get a two-tier system in the National Health Service: one for the rich and one for the poor.
I should like to end by congratulating the Spastics Society in this International Year
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of the Child for the excellent research they have done into ante-natal facilities in this country. It has been found that far more babies of Social Class V, in medical terms, die or are born handicapped. This is partly due to lack of attendance at ante-natal clinics. It has been found from research that pregnant women are not paid during the time they take off to go to ante-natal clinics from working in industry or large plants. Clerical staff would not lose their wages. It seems strange that single women, and those not having paid stamps, do not receive the maternity grant. These, most likely, are the girls and babies in greatest need. As there is a Bill coming into Parliament about this, I hope that the Government will look at this matter in depth. It seems an area that could be much improved.
It has also been found that if small babies weighing less than 1,500 grammes when born are transferred quickly to intensive care baby units, at such places as the University College Hospital in London and St. Mary's Hospital in Manchester, their mortality is reduced by 50 per cent. Understaffed baby care units with nurses who do not know how to use ventilators can become dangerous places, especially at weekends, and permanent handicap, which is a terrible cost to the nation, becomes a risk of such places. Regional referral units for intensive care with an expert staff will reduce calamities and be an effective use of existing resources in the long run.
6.8 p.m.
Baroness FISHER of REDNAL: My Lords, may I also join with other noble Members in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Erne, on his maiden speech this afternoon. He outlined to us that the problems are not just of the capital city of England but are also of the rural areas, in what one would call the far flung parts of Britain. I want to pay special congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw, to whom one listened with great interest, while admiring all the work that she has done for so many years for those less fortunate. The work that she enumerated this afternoon is particularly touching to me because it was this time last year that I lost my husband through that, perhaps one should say, dreadful disease. I hope we shall hear them both speak often in the future.

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This afternoon we have heard many speakers talking about the top-heavy administration. We have heard from the Government side that there are going to be fresh proposals brought at the end of the year. I hope that the fresh proposals are going to be much better than the Sir Keith Joseph proposals in 1974, when we became a top-heavy, administrative National Health Service. But I wonder. When one gets to administrative level in any organisation, they are the most difficult people to move. You can get rid of the cleaners of your corridors; you can get rid of the women who do the washing up; but the people who earn the money at the higher levels in administrative jobs are the most difficult to get at. I shall be listening with great interest and reading the Government proposals, but I repeat that 1974 was a black day for the National Health Service under the Conservatives and we hope for better at the end of this year.
This afternoon noble Lords have been talking about hospital closures. I do not have a great deal of knowledge about the situation of London hospitals and therefore will not speak about them, but I do know about those in another great city, Birmingham, and the feeling that the people of Birmingham have for their local hospitals is exactly the same as the feeling people have for their hospitals in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and elsewhere. I cannot emphasise too much that people have strong feelings for their local hospitals as a result of trust and confidence having been built up in the services which are provided by those hospitals, service given by staff at all levels. These local feelings are of the greatest importance because they show consumer satisfaction, or dissatisfaction as the case may be, and are expressed clearly.
About 18 months ago the Birmingham Accident Hospital, which has a national reputation, particularly for its injury unit concerned especially with industrial injuries—and the West Midlands, being a great industrial area, has many industrial injuries—and an excellent burns unit and a special unit dealing with road traffic accidents was under threat. This hospital is in a very old building that was provided by the City Fathers of Birmingham many years ago. It is worth reminding our-
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selves when we talk about cuts in expenditure that, if our Victorian forefathers had talked about such cuts, we would not today have hospitals for use in our National Health Service because the majority of them are in such buildings, and the Birmingham Accident Hospital is no exception.
The powers-that-be decided that the building was not good enough because they could not purchase the equipment necessary to benefit the hospital and the patients. But there were strong feelings in the area over the issue and the Birmingham Evening Mail ran a campaign, as a result of which many thousands of pound were contributed to the hospital by trade union branches, women's organisations, Rotary, patients, patients' relatives and many others, the money supplying exactly the equipment that could not be provided from public funds. The result was that they got exactly the equipment the medical staff were asking for in that hospital. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the Birmingham Accident Hospital does not close.
How many people consider what happens when a local hospital closes? It is not like closing a local pub so that people cannot pick up their beer on the way home and drink it in the house. We are talking about hospital beds that normally contain patients; hospitals have casualty and out-patient departments. What happens to the people who attend those? They do not just disappear into thin air. Instead, they go further down the list and join the long queues already in existence at established hospitals. I sometimes feel that the people who decide on hospital closures imagine that once the doors are closed the patients just go away, like closing a cinema and the people saying, "We will not go to the pictures any more".
When the question of staff is discussed we should particularly bear in mind staff morale in the National Health Service. When morale is low industrial unrest can be caused. The point I wish to stress is that hospital closures are usually decisions arising from economic considerations; no medical considerations are taken into account. What is particularly worrying for those who work in the NHS, whether at the lower levels of the ancillary staff or whether at the higher levels of

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consultancy, is that those who are advising the Government on cuts in expenditure and economies are in the higher echelons of the Civil Service, and when they bring forward closure recommendations they are themselves completely shielded from the effects of their decision. They are the people who enjoy large pensions on retirement, inflation-proofed because of their own action, and they have the prospect of retiring five years earlier than the average manual worker, after complete job security.
Is it any wonder that the morale of those who work in our hospitals is undermined when the Government are assisted by such people who have no idea what their decisions and recommendations mean? As I have said, their decisions are economic ones. They look at graphs and statistics and make the figures do what they want. But the figures are people; they are the thousands of women who are waiting throughout the country for gynaecological and obstetric treatment. The figures and graphs must be interpreted into the children who are waiting for orthopaedic treatment. A Sheffield doctor, speaking out a few weeks ago, said that if treatment is not given early, children will be condemned for the rest of their lives. Those are the statistics which have to be related in human terms—men who are waiting for treatment, losing time off work and perhaps reducing production figures because of long queues for routine surgery. Certainly we must not waste money in the National Health Service and we must keep a watch on that, but when we are thinking of closing hospitals let us not get bogged down in economics. And before any local hospital is closed, the decision must be taken on a sound medical view of the situation and perhaps some of the economic arguments should be disregarded.
On the question of expenditure that is permitted, we see new hospital buildings and extended wards which cannot be used because we do not have enough money left in the kitty to man and run them. A man is now working for the Government and is going through all the Civil Service departments; I believe his name is Mr. Rayner who comes from a large firm called Marks and Spencer. I am not sure his organisation would not be building and opening
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shops in High Streets only to say, "They will not be open for 12 or 18 months because we do not have enough money for the tills and women to serve the customers" That is what it comes to. What the general public are saying is, "What a cockeyed way to run a hospital service!", when they see new buildings standing there but not enough money to pay the staff to run them and treat the patients.
I appreciate that the National Health Service will not suffer quite as severely as local authorities from the economy cuts. But it must be emphasised that the National Health Service is dependent upon the personal social services that a local authority provides, and so any serious cut-backs in home helps, night-watching services, or meals-on-wheels will automatically result in a greater pressure on geriatric provision in hospitals, because directors of social services will not carry the can for any difficulties that might arise among the elderly people they serve.
We have heard figures this afternoon about National Health Service expenditure. People obtain figures from all kinds of places, and perhaps mine have come from a different place than those already quoted. However. National Health Service expenditure as a proportion of overall Government spending has declined rapidly since 1964. In 1964 15·1 per cent. of overall Government spending was on the National Health Service. In 1973 the percentage fell to 13·75, and in 1974 it dropped to 11·58 per cent. Perhaps I may leave it to the Minister who is to reply to bring the House up-to-date on overall Government spending figures for 1975, 1976 and 1977.
I want to refer to a particular group of persons catered for in the National Health Service who cannot speak up for themselves; others have to speak for them. I speak on behalf of those thousands of people who are mentally handicapped. Time and time again not only this Government but the Government whom I supported have paid lip service to the needs of the mentally handicapped. I suppose that a reason for this is that these people cannot speak up for themselves. They cannot make their own protests, and very often their relatives do not want to make too much fuss because, unfortunately, they feel that there is a stigma attached to mental handicap. There is a propaganda

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campaign—and I say that it is a propaganda campaign—for community care for the mentally handicapped. I believe that it is a completely dishonest campaign, and it is a trick. It is aimed at getting the public, especially those engaged in the mental health field, to accept a running down of the National Health Service in the vague belief that other services exist for the mentally handicapped. Up and down the country, local authorities have not been able to provide after-care facilities or ongoing services for the mentally handicapped. I believe that the trick of community care that is being played on the mentally handicapped ought to be exposed.
I accept that under the National Health Service, there has been a marked improvement in the health care of thousands and thousands of people. Thousands and thousands of people have been very greatful for a return to good health. However, we must accept—and this point was touched upon by my noble friend Lord Pitt of Hampstead in relation to the London area—that those areas in the country with the most serious health problems have the poorest facilities and the fewest doctors; and in that way there are two divisions in the country. Many of the old industrial cities have very poor facilities. As my noble friend Lord Pitt said, they do not have the benefits of the large teaching hospitals which could help them out. They have old, Victorian buildings, converted from work-houses. Statistics show clearly that those areas represent the black spots on the map in our National Health Service. Is it merely wishful thinking to suggest that perhaps some of the eminent consultants who practice in the London teaching hospitals might give their services—I do not say voluntarily—to those regions of the country so starved of facilities, even if for only two days a month?
I do not want to delay the House too long, but I want to refer to fears that I believe are being expressed regarding the state of general practice in inner city areas. I speak as one from a large city that has its fair share of inner city problems. These fears are real. Doctors are no different than other people, in that if they can get an easier job in easier surroundings, they will go for that job. But it is important that the inner city areas are protected and that those doctors
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who are willing to work in such areas should be encouraged. Therefore I wish to ask the Government what future capital provision they are contemplating for these areas and for the GPs who are volunteering to work in them. I have in mind the kind of provision that is so necessary for health centres, so that there are available all the ancillary staff—the marriage guidance counsellors, the psychiatrists, the nurses and all the other people—who make up a complete team for the GP. If we are able to do this, there will be a considerable saving in drugs, through getting rid of stress. As the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said, it is easier to give pills than to give treatment.
My final words will be about children, a matter which has been touched upon by previous speakers. We must recognise that one of the best investments of a nation is to give its children a good start. As we heard this afternoon, Britain is not at the top of the league table in regard to infant mortality. Fifteen out of every thousand babies in this country die within a few days of birth. There are many babies with abnormalities and malformations, and one wonders why this should be. Will the Minister give an assurance to the House that he will undertake serious investigations and research regarding the infant mortality figures that were published last week. These figures cause great concern to those of us who live in the West Midlands—I am not saying in Birmingham—where there was quite a high incidence of infant mortality. There must be reasons for this. If one re-reads the court report one realises that today in this country children still die from 19th century causes.
I am not going to go into the question of increased prescription charges, which has already been discussed. However, I believe that while asking the patient to pay more for a prescription the Government should seriously consider asking the drug companies who have a complete monopoly in supplying the National Health Service whether they will take a cut and perhaps less profit.
I have been in active politics for a long time. I do not speak as an expert on medical matters, except to say that if one receives the services—and I have received them over the last 12 months on behalf of my husband—one sees that excellent

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service can be given, and one worries when one hears criticisms being levelled. I could have levelled many criticisms during my long time visiting hospitals, but it was said this afternoon, I think, that there are over 1 million people working in the National Health Service. There are also over 1 million people using the National Health Service every day, and their grumbles and their dissatisfaction permeates down to the people that work inside it. Here I would say that the morale of ambulancemen is lessened as people complain that they are having to wait two hours or three hours for an ambulance to return them home; and that the morale of the cook in the hospital declines as the catering officer says, "We have got to cut back; we have not got as much money to spend", so that he or she has to serve less appetising meals. And so their morale, already low, continues to sink.
I do not want to keep the House any longer because I know that there are many speakers who have interesting things to say. My final words would therefore be that I do not think the National Health Service has failed. What has happened is that it has lacked a real chance. I think that noble Lords sitting on this side of the House should perhaps accept some criticism, in that they looked upon the National Health Service too sympathetically and too paternalistically, instead of accepting that it was Nye Bevan who brought forward our National Health Service, and our memory to him should have been much more forceful in making it a better service than it is. When we established the National Health Service we had to accept that it was a compromise between the vested interests of the medical profession. I think that was recognised by this side of the House at that time; but what we have today—and this is recognised by many doctors who speak out against the inability of the National Health Service to provide all that their training qualifies them to do—is that interest being usurped by economists and balance sheet budgeteers.
I am sorry I have spoken so long, although I could perhaps have said a lot more. I do not speak very often in this House, but I have spoken this afternoon because I have been 16 years as a councillor in what might be called a down-town area
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in the City of Birmingham and the time I spent in the other House was again as a representative of a down-town constituency; so I know what poor housing and bad standards all round mean in health care. All I would say this afternoon is that I look forward to the Government bringing forward a much more imaginative proposal for the future of the National Health Service.
6.34 p.m.
Lord ROCHESTER: My Lords, from these Benches I should like to join in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Erne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw, on their maiden speeches. If I may say so, I particularly admired the evident compassion—I suppose it was predictable—with which the noble Baroness spoke. I want to speak on that part of the Motion which deals with the need to improve industrial relations in the Health Service, and I approach the subject with considerable diffidence because I have absolutely no experience of these matters in the service itself.
First, on the question of structure, I certainly subscribe to the objective of shortening the distance between senior management and staff as an aid to achieving a number of desirable ends—strengthening management in the front line; improving communications, both upwards and downwards; and helping to ensure that when disputes arise they are settled at the lowest possible level. As regards support for our front-line management, in my view specialising in the industrial relations field can nowadays lead to training on and off the job to develop considerable expertise in this field, and this is necessary if the management team of which they form a part is to have a chance to maintain sound industrial relations. I would add that from what I have read and heard it appears to me that the level at which the personnel function in the Health Service is most in need of strengthening is that of the district. But noble Lords who are closely involved in the service will of course be better judges than I am on that point.
In the matter of communications, it is essential, in my experience, not only that management at every level in an organisation should know from those above and below them what is going on, but more

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particularly that at the very lowest level there are meetings of staff which are held on a regular basis, so that there is a recognised forum for discussing matters of general concern before they develop into industrial disputes. When disputes do arise, it is essential, as I have said, that they should be settled at the lowest possible level, and this cannot be done without an adequate negotiating procedure for dealing with both individual and collective complaints. The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service had a good deal to say on this point in their evidence to the Royal Commission, and I noticed that in their own conclusions the Commission welcomed the proposals on the matter which had been put to the General Whitley Council, and hoped they would soon be introduced. In this, I would strongly support the Commission, but add that every bit as important as the establishment of such procedures is training aimed at ensuring that they are observed. I know something of this at first hand, and particularly of the difficulties which can sometimes arise in trying to arrange for the training of management, supervisors and shop stewards in a large organisation being done jointly; but from the same experience I also know that success in such training will be achieved only if there is a joint commitment to it by both management and trade unions.
I should like to turn now to this vexed question of how national disputes about pay in the Health Service are in future to be resolved. The Royal Commission understandably felt that it would take some time to devise a workable procedure; but I was frankly surprised to learn of their recommendation that the initiative in this matter should come from the TUC alone. It has long been my view that the pay of people employed in certain key occupations which are vital to the support of life should be determined by a single, independent body representing employers and employees, and comprising also an element independent of both employers and trade unions but acceptable to their representatives. I think, further, that the maintenance and independence of this body should be guaranteed by commitments entered into, not only by the Government of the day but also by the main Opposition parties, which commitments would include an undertaking that
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in all circumstances, and irrespective of incomes policies, the findings of the body would be implemented.
I do not think it is practicable that the people whose pay would thus be determined should be required to forego their ultimate right to strike in return for this special treatment, since in the case of the Armed Forces and the police they have no such right to forego and the representatives of others seem to me to be highly unlikely to surrender their pay negotiating rights. Indeed, it was partly for this reason that I could not see how the general body of Health Service employees could be included in any such arrangements at their inception. However, this whole process has been speeded up by the events of last winter and, as we all know, the pay of ambulancemen and of health staff ancillaries has now been adjudicated on by the Clegg Comparability Commission. That being so—and I was interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, had to say on this this afternoon—it seems to me best that we should now try to build on the work that the Clegg Commission has begun, thus preserving that continuity of policy which with the rejection first of the Prices and Incomes Board and later of the Relativities Board has in recent years been so conspicuously lacking.
The Clegg Commission's terms of reference included responsibility to
"… assess the appropriate form of comparisons with terms and conditions in other sections of the economy and identify relevant comparitors".
A less well publicised aspect of the same terms of reference was in the particular service under review
"to report on the possibility of maintaining appropriate internal relativities".
It is perhaps understandable that in the time available the Clegg Commission seem to have paid more attention to external comparisons than to internal relativities. However, in my view this is a matter for regret, for it would no doubt be generally acknowledged that a certain instability has been caused in Health Service industrial relations by the inadequacy of current Whitley Council pay negotiating machinery and the discrepancies that this creates in terms of internal relativities. More particularly, reference to the Clegg Commission of the claim of

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Health Service ancillary staffs before that of nursing staffs seems to have led to an award for ancillary staffs based on external comparisons which carried with it the risk that the service could suffer all the consequences of an inflationary settlement without benefiting from the stability to be obtained from acceptable internal relativities.
However, better late than never. With some trepidation, I should now like to suggest that consideration should be given to establishing a job evaluation scheme having the widest possible application among Health Service employees and based on factor analysis of the same kind that was or has been used in the points scoring system for jobs at corporal level in the armed forces of which the Clegg Commission made some use in its first findings. In evaluating jobs, account could thus be taken of requirements such as previous training, experience, responsibility, physical or mental skill, the working environment and other factors which are relevant to the Health Service.
It is always risky to seek to transpose experience in one working environment to another, particularly when that experience is out of date. I well recall that when about 15 years ago we were seeking in the company for which I then worked to introduce, with the agreement of the unions concerned, what could be loosely called a productivity bargain, we could not have done this without an established job evaluation scheme which was applicable to all our general workers. We were endeavouring at the same time to bring the employment conditions of weekly wage earners more closely into line with those of monthly salaried staff, to inculcate the changes in attitude which those improved employment conditions necessitated, and to involve the employees concerned in deciding how productivity was to be improved. What happened very briefly was that those working in each plant were invited to determine, together with management, what work was to be done by whom, and then they were rewarded under the job evaluation scheme that we had on the basis of the degree of responsibility and other requirements for each reconstituted job in accordance with rates of pay for the various categories that had been agreed with the unions concerned.
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I can only say that it has always seemed to me that that was the best example of employee participation in real life that I have known. I recall moreover that senior line managers closely involved in the exercise at the time told me that it worked primarily because of the great efforts that were made to give management and supervisors generally training in what for want of a better word might be called leadership. That is another story, but it is relevant I suggest to this debate because in my experience it is the quality of leadership, management, getting things done through people, whatever you care to call it, which more than any other factor contributes to the success or the failure of an organisation.
I know that the situation in the public services today is very different from that in industry at the time of which I have been speaking, not least in relation to the reduced amount of money and the number of jobs that are now available. But I should like to ask the noble Lord who is to reply to the debate whether he thinks that there is any prospect of some such imaginative approach as I have sought to suggest being made to this problem of pay relativities within the Health Service, bringing in, as I have tried to indicate, even more desirable objectives into view including, as we are reminded by the Motion before us, the more efficient use of resources, particularly of people. It might be that those of your Lordships who have much closer knowledge than I possess of the operation of the Health Service will be able to think of all sorts of reasons why such a task cannot now be carried out: the size of the organisation, the possible cost of the exercise, and so on. Clearly it is for people other than me to determine how far the task is practicable and, to the extent that it is, the agencies that should be involved in undertaking it: the Clegg Commission, Whitley Councils, the General Whitley Council I suppose it would be, or some other body. I am consoled, however, by the reflection that, in my experience it has often been found useful for someone from outside to make a suggestion that is immediately seen by the insider to have obvious flaws in its first presentation but which nevertheless sparks off some variation of the same idea that eventually proves helpful. I hope it may prove to be so in this case.
6.39 p.m.
Lord RICHARDSON: My Lords, I should like to add my congratulations and pleasure at having heard the maiden speeches of the noble Earl, Lord Erne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw. Both said things that must have had great interest to your Lordships and, in particular, to a doctor. Towards the end of his speech, the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, referred to what seems to me the very pertinent wording of Lord Winstanley's Motion:
"… the necessity for the more efficient use of existing resources".
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, added to that: "This means, of people".
We have heard the word morale "frequently throughout the afternoon. Morale is very difficult to define but it was studied in depth by a professor of psychology at Cambridge Unversity as a result of his experience in the First World War. He incorporated it in a classical book called Psychology and the Soldier. His name was Sir Frederick Bartlett. He looked at morale on different levels. We use the word now so often in relation to the frustrations of our hopes—often unfortunately financial, and sometimes in terms of the resources that are available to us to do our jobs. That is one level.
Sir Frederick looked at it at the level of discipline and imposed morale. Discipline is not a feature of our national life at the present time; but he regarded true morale as something that is within the individual and that can withstand external forces which are inimical to him, and yet maintain a line of conduct that is directed to the service of those in a wide field and beyond his own interest. We are told—and I fear it is true—that morale is low in the Health Service, to which I am personally devoted. It is low at various levels, but if we are to make the most of our man and woman power—people—we have to try to do something to help the formation of a true morale coming from within.
In the war, service hospitals, when on active service in the field, had exactly the same quota of equipment and staff, one with another, the only difference being in actual size, and yet all those hospitals, were different. They all had their own particular sense of pride in their difference:
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they all wished to show their visitors the special things that they did particularly well, and their morale was extremely high. Of course, they had the great advantage that the war must be won and liberty must be established; but they had disadvantages in that they were mobile and constantly moving, roots could not be put down and there was no surrounding community to support them.
In our civilian life we have still the advantage of a common purpose, and that common purpose is not just the service of a patient or of the public in an abstract way: it is the service of ourselves and our own. We are the patients and we are the public. In civilian life we do not suffer from the disability of mobility. Our local area is our local area and we do not suffer from the unavailability of local support.
What I am coming to is this: that in any reorganisation and in any thinking, I do beg that the local interest is mobilised to the utmost. Other noble Lords have made this point this afternoon but I wish to make it most strongly, and I can claim to have worked in hospitals of various kinds ever since the inception of the National Health Service. Locally you can develop pride, locally you can develop service. People like working on medical matters. There is no difficulty in getting volunteers. Those in local service find it the mot interesting of all subjects, so they tell me. There is no trouble about getting people involved and interested if the opportunity is given to them and if they see that the fruits of their work are going into the areas of their interest, namely locally; and if financial saving is made it benefits the local situation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, referred to volunteers and to her enthusiasm for them. Indeed, I hope the point is really well taken by the Government. The noble Baroness, Lady Ryder, talked about voluntary organisations—yes, again, indeed. They must be encouraged and they must be made to work.
There is another thing that will promote a change in attitude, and that is of course very much the most important psychological aspect of the disturbances in the Health Service. It is the withdrawal of constant criticism. The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, touched on this very clearly. She talked in relation to the cooks who are disappointed in that they cannot get the

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equipment they need. That applies at all levels, and there has been for years the insidious development of a feeling that it is a good thing to develop a demand for complaint instead of a demand for advice and help, instead of promoting some gratitude. Gratitude, of course, promotes effort and energy whereas carping criticism promotes anger and inertia. So I hope that the movement towards always trying to develop ever more complicated methods of complaint is looked at again so that the object of getting the very best for the patient can be seen not necessarily to be achieved by antagonising those who for the most part, at all levels of the hospital, are trying desperately hard to make the best of the resources that, we have heard over and over again this afternoon, are limited and are going to be limited.
When I was working at that great hospital across the water and I went to talk to a patient newly arrived and said, "How are you? How are you settling in?" over and over again I was told exactly the same thing. It was not just the welcome on the ward by the kind nurses and the gracious sister: it was the porters, my Lords—the porters in the porters' lodge who got the people out of the ambulances or the hospital cars and wheeled them or walked with them down the hospital corridors and carried their bags. It was they who made the patient welcome, and the result on the patient was quite dramatic: they were peaceful and prepared to face whatever had to be. That was only a minimum of time ago. There are many who will do exactly the same thing now. It has to be fostered and encouraged; the attitudes have to be changed.
7 p.m.
Lord AUCKLAND: My Lords, the two maiden speeches to which we have listened today have been of unique distinction. My noble friend, Lord Erne talked of hospitals and medical services in a very troubled part of the country, where nurses and doctors have to cope not only with what one might call conventional patients, but also with those who are victims of bombs and other very nasty and horrible forms of attack, and, alas! such incidents still take place in that part of the country. The noble Baroness, Lady Ryder, made what I thought was the
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most outstanding speech that I have heard in the 20 years or so in which I have been in this House. It was a speech of quite unique distinction, from somebody to whom many thousands of disabled and handicapped people owe so much, because, if it were not for the noble Baroness and her very worthy helpers, many who are already cruelly disabled would be very much more so today. The House will hope to hear from the noble Baroness very frequently in the future.
I shudder to think how many times I have spoken on the National Health Service in various guises, since I entered your Lordships' House. Indeed, the last time I spoke on it was in a debate which I myself initiated on 6th July, 1977, and I certainly do not propose to go over those points again. But the House is indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for enabling this very effectively worded Motion to be debated today and, as we might have expected, he presented his case clearly and very fairly and made a number of points which we all hope the Government will take on board.
In regard to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for whom I have had genuine respect and devotion over the years, because he himself has done so much for the National Health Service, I must say that I listened to the earlier part of his speech, at any rate, with a certain amount of depression. I say that because, in some ways, it was a re-run of his response to my own speech on 6th July, 1977, when the noble Lord was himself the holder of distinguished office in the then Government.
I just want to say this about private practice. I am one of those noble Lords in this House who do not use private practice. For financial and other reasons, my family and I use the National Health Service and, generally speaking, we have had excellent service from it. But if I may make very brief mention of the Wellington Hospital, I happened to visit that hospital fairly recently and talked to the medical superintendent, the hospital secretary and others. It is a fact that, in practice, the nurses there get rather less remuneration than nurses in the National Health Service, although it is perfectly true to say that the accommodation and possible other bonuses are more favourable.

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But I have never been very convinced by the argument that, because we have private practice in this country, it is siphoning off large numbers of nurses from the National Health Service. I served on the house committees of two hospitals, one a children's hospital and the other a mental hospital, before the reorganisation of the National Health Service, and I really wonder whether there is a single country in the world—and I include the Comecon countries, of which I have visited two—where there is not some form of private practice in operation.
Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, may say about my noble friends and myself, and about our attitudes to the National Health Service, I have always supported the concept of a National Health Service. I have read several times the reports of the debates in 1948, when the late Mr. Aneurin Bevan moved the Second Reading and other stages of the Bill, which followed very closely on the plans of the late Lord Beveridge. Even at that time—I have said this before in your Lordships' House—there was no open hostility in the Conservative Party to the Health Service as such, even though some of the proposals which were put forward at that time were regarded with a certain amount of scepticism, which has in some respects, at any rate, proved to be justified.
But the word which must really pervade any Health Service debate is "dedication", and I believe that nurses, doctors and others who work in the Health Service today are as dedicated as they have ever been, despite the fact that, as has been said, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Richardson, in a very distinguished speech, morale is certainly not as high as it might be. The reasons for this are in some cases beyond the wit of any political party. Overall, the amount of money which is being spent on the Health Service today is higher than at any other time. Whether it is spent more or less wisely than at any other time is a matter for conjecture.
I speak with some feeling about the pay and conditions of nurses, because, like many noble Lords, I have a daughter who is a second-year student nurse at one of the big London teaching hospitals, where she generally enjoys her job and gets on well with her patients; and if she had
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not been dedicated to the nursing profession she would not have gone into that job. The rent which they have to pay for accommodation in nurses' homes, which are very often old, and undecorated, is, more often than not, the reason for morale not being as high as it might be.
We have to realise that, particularly in our teaching hospitals, we have nurses not only from Essex but also from Penzance and Wick—and similarly with doctors. Also, of course, we have nurses from many countries overseas—from both the old and the new Commonwealth and also from other parts of the world. To them, the nurses' home, for probably 50 weeks of the year, is their home. As I have said, some of the conditions in those homes are certainly not all that they might be.
I have given my noble friend notice of a number of other questions, but I should like to ask him whether, as soon as financial conditions allow, the Government will give priority to making sure that not only in the London teaching hospitals but also in the hospitals of big cities like Birmingham—a friend of ours is a doctor at the accident hospital there—there is a campaign to upgrade nurses' homes. I think that this would do a great deal to improve morale within the Health Service.
The other problem surrounding the Health Service is the plethora of blue papers, green papers and others that we have had upon the service. All of these committees have been headed by such distinguished people as the noble Lord, Lord Porritt, the late Lord Platt and the noble Lord, Lord Briggs, a copy of whose report, which dates back to 1972, I happen to have here.
I should also like to ask my noble friend when the Government intend to act on some of the more important proposals which Briggs put forward regarding the committee on nursing services. Successive Governments seem to have fought shy of this. May I draw your Lordships' attention to paragraph 1 of Chapter 1 which deals with the background to the work of the committee. I quote its purpose:
"To review the role of the nurse and the midwife in the hospital and the community and the education and training required for that role so that the best use is made of available manpower to meet present needs and the needs of an integrated health service".

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Much has happened in the Health Service since then, but the same urgent problems remain to be solved.
There has been, alas! the reorganisation of the Health Service under the party which I support. I make no apologies for having opposed that particular scheme root and branch ever since I spoke on the Second Reading of the Bill. I hope, with others who have spoken, that any reorganisation, any removal of a tier, ensures some local representation. I am thinking in particular of the local hospital management and house committees. Although I am no expert on the question of industrial unrest, I venture to suggest that at least some of the industrial unrest which we have had in our hospitals is due to the lack of communication in a very large organisation. When there were hospital management committees, a relatively small complaint could often be looked at very quickly, even if not rectified. I know from the experience of one of our local mental hospitals that very often one now has to wait some time before the local area health authority or community health council visits that particular hospital.
These are the kind of matters which I think the noble Lord has put at the forefront of the debate. As a result of it, I hope that we shall get at least reassurance from the Government on two matters: first, that when the new reorganisation—if that is the right word—takes place, communication will be the foremost point to be looked at ; secondly, that the nurses' pay review will be looked at as quickly as possible. At the moment, not only in this country but in others, nurses are having to do all kinds of jobs. In casualty departments, very often they have to cope with drunken and violent patients. For this kind of work they get no extra pay. It is a miracle how many survive the course.
I have said this before in your Lordships' House but I conclude with these words: the National Health Service of this country is an example to the rest of the world of how medical treatment is given, devotedly and conscientiously. It is unfortunate, when there is industrial unrest from time to time and when a patient dies on the operating table, that the communication media publicise it to the hilt. It is right that these things should be publicised.
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Equally, it is essential, when this country is going through a difficult period and will do so for some time to come, that our National Health Service's creditable points should be revealed—because they far outweigh the others—so that those who use the Health Service, and above all those who work in it, are assured of at least the goodwill of Parliament for their welfare.
7.18 p.m.
Baroness DARCY DE KNAYTH: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for initiating this debate and for giving us the opportunity to hear two maiden speakers, whom I should like to congratulate most warmly on extremely interesting speeches. I should also like to express my admiration for the work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw. I have no intention of likening the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, to the Mafia, but having been involved in the sit-in last week at Stoke Mandeville when ex-patients occupied two wards at that hospital, I really did feel that in presenting us this week with an opportunity to take part in this debate he was making an offer that I could not refuse.
My noble friend beside me on the "mobile bench" has already spoken of the problems of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville. She spoke of their serious consequences in the debate on the family last month, so I shall try not to bore your Lordships by going over ground which has already been covered. However, the present problems of the NSIC are so important and so urgent that I really do feel that they bear underlining.
First let me tell your Lordships very briefly about the sit-in, because perhaps not many of your Lordships have ever been involved in a demonstration of this sort. The sit-in started on 7th November, the day that the Bucks Area Health Authority were to meet to decide upon the proposed closure of one whole female ward—what was the only other female ward is now a mixed ward—and also on the closure of the children's annexe which has recently been renovated by voluntary contribution. Unlike most demonstrations, this had no political or union undertones whatsoever. It was organised entirely by paraplegics, among

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them ex-servicemen, retired civil servants, a solicitor, an ex-jockey, housewives. They were all ex-patients who were so worried by the proposed cutbacks that they felt some action was necessary. I think it would be true to say that none of these people had ever been involved in a demonstration of any kind before.
The sit-in was well organised, well behaved and caused no serious disruption to the running of the hospital, only minor inconveniences—and it had its effect. The area health authority deferred its decision until after the Minister of State for Health visits the NSIC on the 20th November. The Member of Parliament for the area came down to discuss the problems and the Minister himself had a friendly, and I hope constructive, consultation with a small deputation of us, and agreed to meet the ex-patients again when he visits the unit and talks with the consultants there on 20th November.
When I spoke of ex-patients, I should really say "old patients" or "on-going patients" because in the case of spinal cord injury there is no such thing as an ex-patient, unless he be a dead one. There is a need for continual regular checkups and in all probability the need for readmission at some stage to treat, for example, a pressure sore or urinary or kidney problems. The national spinal injuries centre, being the only spinal unit for the whole of the South of England, has to care for somewhere in the region of between 4,000 and 6,000 such old patients. The pressure is so great that the patients are not called in for check-ups; they have to ask for one. If there are no known problems check-ups are done only every two years instead of annually.
My noble friend has already told your Lordships of the much more satisfactory situation in the northern units. I know of patients who have had to go to their local hospitals for check-ups which consequently were incomplete because the waiting-list at the unit is so long. Those with pressure sores may have to wait vital weeks before being admitted and the needs of these patients are very clearly not being met.
For the newly injured spinal patient the situation is even more grave, and I cannot stress too often how essential it is to get
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the correct treatment and nursing from the very start to prevent complications—as my noble friend also has said—such as pressure sores or contractures. A pressure sore may seriously retard a patient's rehabilitation and continue to be a problem throughout his life. If contractures of the limbs are allowed to develop through insufficient physiotherapy a patient may never become as agile and fully rehabilitated as he might have been. Therefore, it is essential to be in a spinal unit from the earliest possible moment. Some consultants in general hospitals at present do not even bother to contact the NSIC to find out whether spinal patients may be admitted because they have heard of the problems of the unit and think that the waiting-list may be too great.
But, my Lords, general hospitals simply do not have the specialist knowledge required, apart from the fact that it is psychologically important for a spinally injured patient to be with other paraplegics from whom he can gain knowledge and support and hope for the future. My noble friend has already cited several cases of patients who have been in dire plight in general hospitals, and the same is still true today. A friend of my daughter recently broke her neck in a car crash and, after a few weeks in one of the best orthopaedic hospitals in this country, arrived at Stoke Mandeville with a pressure sore on—of all places—her head. Some of your Lordships may have seen the horrific sores on the patient featured in "Nationwide" last week. I can assure your Lordships that when that patient arrived in the unit they were far worse; they were large enough to get one's fist into them.
This is waste, not only in human terms but in financial terms. My noble friend has already mentioned cost-effectiveness. A patient can spend six months in a spinal unit, repairing such damage—an expensive exercise, as your Lordships will be aware. It is reckoned that a paraplegic, correctly treated, can be rehabilitated and discharged within four to five months. A tetraplegic—that is someone who has broken his neck and consequently has not got movement in his hands and possibly not in his arms, either—within seven months. Why double the cost by incorrect treatment at the start? This cannot be the most effective use of resources.

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When the National Spinal Injuries Centre was transferred from the Ministry of Pensions in the early 1950s it had a two-year special allocation and then came under the Oxford Regional Health Authority; and as your Lordships have already heard from my noble friend this region has severe problems of its own because it is so rapidly expanding in population. The present system of funding simply has not worked as money allocated to the NSIC is not easily identifiable. I will give your Lordships an example of this. In another place, in his adjournment debate on Stoke Mandeville Hospital, on 2nd February 1979, the honourable Member for Aylesbury spoke of the special spinal weighting factor that was going to be introduced to provide more money for Stoke Mandeville Hospital. This was following the visit the previous year of the then Minister of State for Health, Roland Moyle, to Stoke Mandeville Hospital. This special weighting was expected to produce an additional £400,000.
In February, in an adjournment debate, the honourable Member spoke of the anxiety of the Stoke Mandeville Hospital staff to know what had happened to that sum. Although the national allowance had been made the Oxford region was spending up to its so-called RAWP level—the resources allocation mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead—and the £400,000 appeared to be a mythical bookkeeping transaction. In his reply the Minister said that the special weighting would come into effect for the financial year 1979–80. We are now well into that financial year and the unit has still not seen a penny of that sum. Perhaps the noble Lord who is to reply for the Government can discover what has happened to this before the Minister of Health visits Stoke Mandeville on 20th November.
The unit has been starved of money over the past 10 years and is already seriously below par so that the cuts are really not comparable with other similar cutbacks. At present it is the only spinal unit in the South of England from the Severn to the Wash, covering a population of 23½ million people. Patients also come from outside this area and from overseas, and the Department of Health has recognised that over 100 spinal beds are needed now in the South of England. The
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proposed unit at Odstock, which will be 50 to 60 beds, will not be operational until mid-1983 at least, and the unit at Stanmore, which is a small one of 20 beds, somewhat earlier. I submit that we cannot therefore allow the NSIC to be further reduced at this moment. I very much hope that after the Minister's visit on 20th November he will produce some practical and workable solution and some way of ensuring that money allocated to the NSIC actually gets there.
We are talking about one of the foremost hospitals in the world for the treatment of spinal injuries. Can we afford to let its reputation die as its Nissen huts crumble and patients have to be refused admission? International prestige and human lives and suffering apart, can we, in purely financial terms, afford the cost of repairing damage to spinally injured patients—damage that need never have occurred had they been correctly treated in the first place and in the right place?
7.29 p.m.
Lord MURRAY of GRAVESEND: My Lords, I should like, first, to thank the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for having initiated the debate, but, having said that, I always feel that there is an air of sadness about these debates. One air of sadness is to hear the noble Baroness who has just spoken of the individual problems that spending cuts raise and the fact that I genuinely feel sure that nothing is going to be done as a result of this debate. I think that the Conservative Government are on a course of spending cuts, and whatever we say here, or whatever they say in that House across the way, nothing will be changed. We have to start and have a look at some of the things which my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell said about their election Manifesto. In the election campaign the Labour Party said that there would be cuts in the spending on health and the Tories denied this, but in fact we have been proved right.
In any other field the Tories would have been prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act, because over a whole range of areas, whether educational or health, we are now going to see a series of cuts that will, in my view, take generations to remedy. They have got

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this thing about public spending, which is partly a myth, because the amount we spend, the Government expenditure of the gross domestic product, is lower in this country as a percentage than in any other country in the European Community.
One of the priorities that the Government ought to have been looking at when they came into office is at least maintaining the Health Service as it has been maintained over the last 30 years, because it is a fact that in many years there is more time lost through ill health and sickness and accidents in our places of work than through bad industrial relations, which again is an area which the Government seem hell-bent to do something about. I believe that this Government are moving us towards a mean-minded and hard-hearted society. We are moving into that area of Proposition 13 in California where we are witnessing what Galbraith said:
"private affluence and public squalor".
I think that all of us ought to be very concerned about what they are doing to the Health Service.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, if the noble Lord will give way for one moment, I think if he looks at the Official Report tomorrow he will see that I said that the volume of Government spending on the Health Service will increase by 3 per cent. over next year; this will more than make up for the slight cutback there has been this year, and in fact will mean a one half per cent. improvement. So that statement is not true and what we said at the election is true.
Lord MURRAY of GRAVESEND: My Lords, I am afraid the noble Baroness is wrong, because at least 1 per cent. is needed to take up the demographic question of people living longer. That has immediately overtaken your half per cent. growth. We ought to be looking to maintaining and improving the service. The cuts also do not take into account the question of wage increases. They do not take into consideration that the Health Service will be paying £40 million a year in increased VAT. So I think that myth has to be dealt with. Again the cuts always affect the least well-off in our society, whether they are the people receiving treatment or needing treatment or whether they are the people working in
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the hospitals, and we know that they are mostly the people in this society on lower incomes.
Mr. Jenkin in the other place said that administration will be the target and not patients. I think that is another bogeyman. If that is the case, Sir Keith Joseph ought to be making a public apology to the country for the reorganisation of the Health Service, when we are now told that we can save £30 million a year by cutting out one of the tiers which was created by the last Conservative Government. But if we look at the question of non-hospital administration costs in this country, again that is lower than most of our partners in the European Community. It is certainly lower than France, which runs at 10·8 per cent.; it is certainly lower than Germany, which runs at 5 per cent. Our non-hospital administration costs in this country run at something like 2·6 per cent. Again I think it is a matter of setting up a bogeyman and saying it is bureaucracy causing all our problems in the Health Service.
What this Government ought to be concentrating on is the fact that we have on our waiting lists in this country at the present time something like 620,000 people. We have a situation where wards are being closed all over the country and we have at the moment 8,000 nurses who are unemployed. It would be interesting to see the equation of what we may be paying those in unemployment benefits as against what they would be paid if they were able to do the job for which they were trained. It is a service that is already under pressure in this country. Half of our hospitals were built in the 19th century. If the Minister wants to say—and I dispute her figures—that they are running at just above the previous level, we ought to be injecting more money and making sure that the people who work in the hospitals and the people who have to use the hospitals as patients get the best possible hospitals.
We can only admire those people who work in the hospitals. As the noble Baroness has said there are over 1 million working in the National Health Service, and nobody can doubt the record they have in terms of industrial relations over the past 30 years since the inception of the National Health Service, and that is at all levels. They are obviously not con-

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cerned only with the wage levels but with the problems and the need to serve the community in this country.
Occasionally we have industrial disputes. We had in the last week or so the question of Charing Cross Hospital; that situation was highlighted and people were being harassed and pressed by the media to see how they were cutting off supplies to the hospital. But we must recognise, and the Government ought to recognise, that it is only a tiny minority of people who cause these sort of difficulties. Indeed, if we look at the record of last winter, when there were disputes in the National Health Service, I would have thought what the Clegg Commission did, as a result of those disputes, was to say that the workers in the National Health Service certainly had a case. The previous Government were trying to fix a ceiling of 5 per cent. and indeed Clegg gave them increases varying between 15 and 27 per cent.
In my own area in Kent we have the problem of cuts in the Gravesham and Dartford area of something like £500,000. We are facing the problem in Kent of something like £100,000 having to be saved on the ambulance service which does such fine work in our county. We are having ward closures and unit closures in the Medway towns. This is the area of Dickens and certainly the hospitals there were built when Dickens was living and working in the Medway towns. We have the problem of the closure of the orthopaedic ward at the Medway Hospital and psychiatric unit.
People are trying to have to raise money to keep two units open in Kent. In my view this begging-bowl mentality for maintaining the Health Service is the wrong way to go about it. I should say that in that area the Evening Post, the local Medway paper, has been running a campaign to raise money, and they have done remarkably well in raising money. But in my view that is not the way to run our Health Service and people should not have to be raising money once again after having paid their taxes and their health insurance stamps to maintain hospitals which should be their right. We are moving back into the area of Poor Law Guardians. The Government ought to to be looking at
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what we can do to improve the Health Service rather than saying we should be cutting services and having ward closures, not only in Kent but all over the country.
I think we ought to get some answers from the Government, and if we do not get them tonight I hope we are going to get them in the document they are producing later. There are the problems of teaching hospitals and their position within regional health authorities; whether the burden of that should be placed on regional health authorities, having to disburse those funds. There is the question of whether we should, as the Royal Commission suggested, abolish prescription charges. After all, they only contribute something like 1£6 per cent. of the funding of the National Health Service. I wonder whether, with the administration involved, it is worth while having prescription charges purely on economic grounds, apart from my political feeling about them.
Then there is the question—again a question raised by the Royal Commission—of pay beds. There is also the question of trade unions and industrial relations within the National Health Service. The noble Baroness spoke about volunteers in hospitals. I am not so certain about that aspect. I am not certain that, at a time when we want to go into the possibilities of achieving a better trade union relationship and industrial relations with the trade unions in the National Health Service, we should be talking about having volunteers in the National Health Service if there is a further breakdown in negotiations. I do not think that that is the way we should be embarking on the negotiations. There are—this is one of the problems of the National Health Service—something like 44 different bodies with negotiating rights at national and local level. I think that the TUC accepts that something needs to be done about that. The TUC has set up its own training courses to give instruction, help and advice to those people who are shop stewards in the National Health Service. There is the question of whether we ought not to abolish VAT for the National Health Service in the same way as we do for local authorities. It is paying a great deal of money and, as the Minister said in another place, there will be an increase of £40 million over and above what it already pays in VAT.

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There is also the question of whether we should be looking at cutting down drug costs. About 60 per cent. of the drugs used in this country are imported. We should be looking at whether there is a better way of dealing with this matter and whether more drugs could be manufactured at cheaper cost in this country. There is the question of the promotion of drugs in this country. Every doctor to whom one talks mentions yards and yards of paper. We talk about Government paper work, but let us consider the paper work that comes from drugs companies and others interested in selling commodities to doctors. I am thinking of the reams of paper that come through their letter boxes and the samples. Perhaps we should look at whether there is over-promotion of drugs. I hope that the Government—and I say similar words at the end of most of my speeches—will re-examine whether they should be moving along the path of cutting down the National Health Service. I hope that they will not go much further down that path. If they will not stop, then certainly when we return to power we shall do something about it.
7.43 p.m.
Lord SMITH: My Lords, I too believe that this House owes a great debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, not only for the opportunity of this debate, but for the terms in which the Motion was moved at the beginning of the debate. He placed the emphasis where it should be and that is on the needs of patients. Before I leave that point I should like to say how much I enjoyed both of the maiden speeches. However, I was particularly moved by the splendid speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw.
Emphasis should be placed on the needs of patients, but I think that right at the beginning we should take a good look at those needs and, before we accept unreservedly what might be an implied criticism of the National Health Service for not meeting those needs, we should be quite sure that they are needs which a National Health Service can in fact meet. Before trying to answer what is obviously a fundamental question, I ask your Lordships briefly to look at what has happened to medicine in the last few decades and in particular the last 10 to 15 years. Changes have occurred which
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would, in any case, have presented us with huge new problems—problems just as pressing in countries that have not made the attempt to bring into being a national health service.
To begin with, there has been, and still is, a huge and rapidly growing expansion in the demand for medical services of all kinds. Your Lordships will, of course, know that, but I hope that noble Lords will bear with me while I mention briefly some of the causes of this expansion as seen by those who provide the services. There have been totally unprecedented scientific and technological advances. One could mention a couple of dozen advances without having to stop to think. However, from the surgeon's point of view let me give as examples the whole new area of coronary artery surgery and the whole new area of replacing joints, of which new hip joints for old is just one example. They have all provided new hope for patients. However, as they do so they have provided new headaches for those who have to pay for those services.
The expansion is also due to the survival into old age of a much higher percentage of the population. It is also due to large increases in the screening and immunising programmes. It is due to a great demand at the small hospitals and at small community level for services previously confined to the large hospitals, universities, or specialised hospitals. I am thinking of services such as kidney machines, intensive care units, coronary care units, sophisticated new diagnostic machinery and highly sophisticated new modern surgery.
The expansion is due to a much broadened view of what is, in fact, a need. For the unjustified demand yesterday becomes a need today and will become a right tomorrow. Moreover, there is the "We have paid for it" syndrome—that is, the belief in the minds of many that National Health Service contributions carry an entitlement to everything which medical science has discovered, however exotic and however costly. The latter presents growing problems, because, human nature being what it is, any service that appears to be free at the moment of delivery will generate its own unreasonable demand. Moreover, as the public becomes better educated in health matters—there is a good side

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and there is also a bad side—the demand becomes not only quantitative but qualitative. The increased demand is not just for more services, but for services of a higher and therefore a most costly standard.
I believe that that last factor is largely uncontrollable if every element of personal responsibility in regard to the provision of health care is removed from potential patients and vested solely in the State. Doctors who are anxious to see the Health Service succeed—and that is most of them, certainly, I would say so—have from the start seen this as a danger point. For centuries our hospitals and individual doctors, too, have been actuated by the belief that, "Yes, I am my brother's keeper, provided he needs to be kept". It is a considerable step to add, "Whether he needs to be kept or not"; and not only that, but ,"Whether he wants to be kept or not".
Together with the huge expansion in demand there has been an equally huge and accelerating increase in the cost itself. That is so, not only in countries where there is a national health service—it is worldwide. In the United States of America the published costs of health care in 1950 amounted to 12 billion dollars. Twenty-five years later that 12 billion dollars had become 118 billion dollars. In the four years since then the figure has risen, and it appears that by the end of 1979 it will top the 200 billion dollar mark. Both as regards technology and management, the costs are increasing and they are increasing at an accelerating rate. Here, the cost of the National Health Service—which before the Health Service first started was put as low as £40 million a year—has crept up beyond the £9,000 million mark.
This produces terrifying problems for patients, doctors and for any Government. From the patients' point of view there is a constricting combination of heightened expectation, lack of availability and lack of the means to pay for what is available. As for doctors, their professional pride in advancing the frontiers of medical knowledge is accompanied by a disillusionment in the lack of means to apply his knowledge. From the point of view of any Government, with medical costs out of control there is a need to look at three linked questions.
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The first is: can any State afford the highest standards of medical care for everybody? If the answer to that is "No", what standards can be provided, and how can we set this standard? Thirdly, once we have set that standard, will it inevitably decline with time? I do not mean decline in absolute terms, but certainly decline in relative terms, as the gap widens between what medical science tells us can be done and what we know can be afforded.
One of the major difficulties, of course, in maintaining standards goes right back to the definition of the purpose of our own National Health Service contained in the White Paper of 1944. It says:
"The proposed service must be ' comprehensive ' in two senses—first, that it is available to all people and second, that it covers all necessary forms of health care".
That was in 1944. In 1966, in Canada, almost the same words were used. In introducing the Bill containing plans for a national health insurance programme, the Prime Minister listed certain basic requirements. The first two were that it must be universal—available to all; and that it must be comprehensive and cover all needs. That is history repeating itself, but alas! one of the unpalatable facts of life today is that every time history repeats itself the price goes up.
In 1974—a mere five years ago—I was President of the Royal College of Surgeons and I asked the Prime Minister of the day—because it was obviously useful for doctors to know this—whether the policy of his Government was still that the Health Service must be comprehensive in these terms: providing everything for all people. He answered: Yes, it was. It was shortly afterwards that I became less than popular with the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, with whom I had many interesting conversations at that time, for expressing the view that medical science was advancing at such a rate that already the expense of providing, through taxation, everything for all people was beyond the means of any Government and that we had entered an era of health care rationing.
Today to say such a thing raises not a ripple. We know that there is this gap and it is painfully obvious to us all that the rationing of health care in this country is a fact. Moreover—and this is not an

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illogical parallel—if a Government, through the worthiest of motives, said: "Let us feed the hungry", and then decided that it would be a better idea to feed everybody, in times of shortage the thinly spread subsistence might prove inadequate for any; and then not only might the original intent of feeding the hungry be lost, but deficiency diseases would be apparent everywhere. That is what is happening today to our National Health Service. To provide everything for all may have sounded right in 1944; it may have been right in 1948; but it is creating near-insuperable problems as we approach the 1980s.
What can be done? I believe that it is not a problem that can possibly be solved merely by increasing the percentage of the GNP which is applied to health care, though in some countries, as we know, this percentage is higher. But this would be a short-term expedient and I believe would make no attempt to identify and tackle basic problems. The report of the Royal Commission says:
"The impossibility of meeting all demands for health services was not anticipated. Medical, nursing and therapeutic techniques have been developed to levels of sophistication and expense which were not foreseen when the NHS was introduced".
In a different place in the same report it says:
"It is important to remember the almost unlimited capacity of health services to absorb resources".
That is right. The expanding field of modern medicine has a voracious appetite, and would swallow up any additional allocation and simply ask for more.
On the other hand, are we doing enough, or is the situation totally out of control? I am sure that there are things that can be done and many that certainly should be done. In the short-term we must, of course, use resources to their best effect and eliminate waste, including the waste of over-complicated and over-proliferated administration. I believe that no one should or would blame the ills of the National Health Service on our administrators who, in the main, are highly skilled and highly motivated professionals who serve our Health Service well.
But there is a difference between good administration and an obstructing bureaucracy. We must find some way of keeping
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the former and getting rid of the latter. I do not believe that it is enough to delete a redundant tier, which perhaps we never ought to have had in the first place. We must go back much further than that. I was greatly affected by what the noble Lord, Lord Richardson, said. We must try to simplify more than that. I should like to see us re-animate our hospital management committees. I should like to see given back to the profession the boards of governors of the university hospitals that served us so well. I should like these to work directly with regional hospital boards. Then we would have got back to the local control of affairs, to which reference has already been made this evening.
Also in the short and the long term, clearly, we should hope that we may improve industrial relations in our hospitals. This is not a matter which I shall talk about in detail, but in this context perhaps I might remind the Government that in this House on 25th January (at column 1582) I asked a question about the situation in our hospitals while a solution is being sought to a major problem. The question was:
"Is it really a task beyond the intelligence and ingenuity of our society to devise some way in which at least the safety of patients in hospital, incapacitated by illness or by injury, might be guaranteed?"
In asking that question, I received some considerable support from various noble Lords, but since then I do not think I can recall any question that seems to have stirred up so much apathy. I hope that my question has not been forgotten or that it is now considered to be of no importance. I do not think that patients who were in hospital last winter have so easily forgotten.
I turn now to the long term. It is not enough to identify this gap and merely to watch it widen. Surely the State and the health care professions in partnership can do better than that. I believe that one mistake that is in some danger of being perpetuated is in assuming that independent medical practice is inimical to the Health Service, a danger to it and must necessarily develop in isolation. If we continue along that road, all too easily we can arrive at a situation which is ethically disturbing to doctors and perhaps also politically precarious for any

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Government in power. For if those in relatively low income brackets perforce accept treatment in a contracting National Health Service and those in higher income brackets have access to an expanding independent medical sector, this tacitly accepts two standards in medicine, which must diverge as increasingly the State is compelled to provide not the best Health Service it can design but the best Health Service it can afford.
I believe the philosophy of isolating independent medical practice from the National Health Service might thus irreparably damage the Health Service itself, and also reintroduce class differences that at the present time are fast disappearing in relation to health care in Britain. The reverse of course would be to accept that there is a limit to what the State can do, that there is a gap, and that one might hope the closer links between State medicine and independent medicine might fill some part of that gap, or at lease mitigate its effects.
That is an overlong and perhaps grammatically clumsy sentence, so let us go the whole hog and end it with a "proposition": supposing there were already in being a small group whose sole concern was the liaison between State medicine and independent medicine, and that whenever a hospital, a department, a ward were in danger of being closed for lack of resources this group were merely asked, "What could you suggest, working together, might be done to keep this open?" Might this not help patients? Might it not maintain employment? Might not private hospitals, some of them of high standard, train nurses? Might not private hospitals on occasion provide registrar posts for those aiming at a specialist career? Is not the concept at least worthy of some detailed examination?
The concept of the National Health Service is a great one of which I think all in this country ought to be proud, and still, despite its many detractors, it could be the envy of the world, though many countries looking in on us from outside do so with anxieties and wonder whether it could become a casualty of our economic difficulties. We simply must not let that happen. Can it not be accepted that "the needs of patients", the entirely appropriate words used in
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the Motion, would best be served by a partnership between the State on the one hand and the whole of medicine, including the independent sector, on the other? What is needed is merely, I believe, for the Government to say, "Let us examine this proposition together". If such an approach were made—I speak today as a doctor and for many doctors who feel alike as I do—I know the answer would be that we believe this to be right, and would support it. If you would test our sincerity in this matter, just try us and see.
8.3 p.m.
Lord COLWYN: My Lords, while wishing to thank the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for initiating this interesting and wide-ranging debate this evening, I must apologise to him and indeed to the speakers from both Front Benches, and to the maiden speakers, for not being in my seat during their speeches. I should like to be able to say that I was unavoidably detained in my National Health Service practice seeing my National Health Service patients, but regrettably I am now getting far too old to deal with the vast numbers of patients many of my colleagues have to see under the National Health Service. However, I hope perhaps to say a few words about that tomorrow night in our debate on flouridation.
Clearly there is a limit to the funds which we can put into our public services; even the most worthy ones such as the National Health Service. The current financial constraints can be seen constructively as providing an incentive to the Health Service's managers to look for improvements in efficiency. I have no doubt that there is scope for this in many parts of the service, including services in my own dental field. But keeping to the general for the moment, one of the areas which is widely seen as in need of pruning is administration, and again I have to agree.
The 1974 reorganisation has proved cumbersome and unwieldy. Too many people spend too much time sitting on committees and taking part in other administrative rituals rather than getting on with their real work. I think it is common ground between us that the Health Service would do well to simplify its administrative structure. But how this simplification should be carried out is

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not an easy question. The structure which is appropriate would depend on the geography of the area being served, and it would depend on the nature of the service being managed.
The Royal Commission on the NHS emphasised the need for flexibility. In the Commission's words:
"The needs of Wester Ross and Tower Hamlets are obviously entirely different".
Equally, a structure which is appropriate for managing 200,000 ancillary staff, or 400,000 nurses and midwives, is unlikely to be ideal for organising the community dental services, which number only 2,000 dentists over the whole country.
In fact, and in spite of its other faults, the 1974 reorganisation recognised this. So far as dental services are concerned the organisational focus has been at area level. Districts have had little significance for dentistry, and neither in practice have regions. Effectively our structure is already simple: it is already single-tiered. It is therefore with some concern that my colleagues have heard the Health Minister, Dr. Gerard Vaughan, suggest recently without qualification that it is almost certainly area health authorities which will go in the forthcoming restructuring.
Now I am not suggesting that this may not broadly be the right thing to do, but I am suggesting that it is not the whole answer. If areas go, then in some parts of the country and for some services efficient management will require something else very like them. What I also suggest is that it is not good industrial relations for the Minister to give an incomplete statement of his intentions to a party conference in advance of publication of an important White Paper. The fact is that the Minister's statement has given rise to considerable anxiety, certainly in the community dental service, and probably in other services too. Careers face disruption again only a few years after the last reorganisation, and as yet no protection arrangements have been agreed.
This is not the way to persuade people to work more efficiently. Good industrial relations need openness, clear intentions, consultation, and in the present situation when we are about to change the Health Service's administrative structure an
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important need is to minimise career uncertainties for people working in the service, otherwise declining morale could undermine the whole running of the service. I am sure that we all wish the Minister success in his efforts to improve the Health Service's use of its resources in this difficult time. I hope he will bear in mind that better industrial relations are essential to more efficient management.
8.9 p.m.
Lord BROCK: My Lords, first of all I note that Lord Winstanley's Motion is very carefully worded, in that the first impression on reading it is that it directly accuses the National Health Service as such as going wrong, but more careful study reveals that it does not specify who is responsible. The general impression easily accepted is that the NHS itself is at fault, and with this I wish to protest strongly. There is little doubt that there is much wrong with the service that it provides; but is this the sole fault of the service or something else? It is not so long ago that we were being told that the NHS was the best in the world and that we could be proud of it. How does it come about that now it is said to be running to seed?
I have been associated with the hospital service since 1924, and with the National Health Service itself from its commencement in 1948 until 1968, when I retired. Since then I have observed a steady deterioration in what is being provided, but not in the service itself which is still splendid; the work of the doctors at all levels from consultants downwards, is as good as ever. The nurses also do just as good work. I have a daughter who is ill in hospital and she becomes lyrical about what the nurses do so magnificently; often dirty, unpleasant and hard things, without protest.
It is in certain of the ancillary services that I see a falling off as a positive hindrance to good work. Their antics, actions and intentions have even begun to affect the speech and thoughts of the doctors, nurses and other workers who have at times even mentioned such shabby, unprofessional and unacceptable things as threats of industrial action. Many of the ancillary staff, no doubt influenced by union action, have already descended to this. It is clear that if you touch pitch

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you may be defiled. A year or two ago the country was electrified by the statement of some foolish woman that food should no longer be served to private patients in hospital. A big London teaching hospital which cost many millions of pounds is now threatened with closure because a group of hooligans are stopping its oil deliveries. Since then we have had the sad tale of similar disruption and threats.
When I look back on my long years of service with the hopsitals and with the NHS, I retain a very different impression of doctors and nurses, who in general are eager and dedicated people, falling over themselves to do a good job. This same spirit of service and of devotion was still to be seen in the NHS that I knew from 1948. I continued to be fully impressed with what was being done. After 1968, when I retired, I began to notice disturbing elements. Things were just not so good and one heard many sour comments and criticisms. Things altered so much that one even accepted the statement that it was just as well not to be in the NHS.
But despite these misgivings and criticisms, I was still very impressed with the high standard of excellent work being done. It is true that adverse comments were continually heard about certain levels of ancillary staff whose behaviour was, frankly, disgraceful, but the real high standard of good work went on. Take, for instance, the conduct of obstetrics, a common and much-needed discipline. I was recently talking to an obstetrician friend who would enthuse over what it now has to offer, especially, for instance, in the way of monitoring the health and performance of newly-born babies. Then one thinks of advances in hip joint replacement and many joints in surgery pioneered by Sir John Charnley and followed by many surgeons. Many thousands of patients have been, and are being, benefited by this, including, I imagine, not a few in your Lordships' House. This is a field where previously there was almost nothing, and it now offers complete relief from a severe crippling complaint.
There is then the whole field of cardiac surgery, a virtually completely new industry which brings so much to so many where before there was no hope of relief. Only recently we had the news of
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a politician in prison for his criminal activities but let out temporarily so that he could benefit from the operation now available. We also had news of a distinguished and popular entertainer who was able to have the same operation as a life-saving procedure.
Rather more esoteric, but none the less very important and supplying a much needed advance, is the replacement of diseased organs, especially kidneys and liver, and now even the heart with which success is being achieved. Although less spectacular, but still a very successful form of tissue transplantation, is the whole saga of blood transfusion for which service the NHS has much to be proud. When I reflect on all these things and the many others we owe to the NHS I continue to marvel at the success and progress of this much criticised and maligned service.
The defects lie scarcely at all with the professional element, the doctors and nurses, but the disturbances lie with many of the non-professional or ancillary element; by no means with all of them, many of whom maintain the high and praiseworthy standards that pertain to the doctors and nurses, but it is not possible to ignore the harm done by a certain element. While these continue to be disruptive, there is going to be discord in the service. But I must point out that they form a group new to and inflicted on the original NHS, and it is they who are responsible for the disharmony that exists. But they are not intrinsically part of the NHS as I and many others used to know it. They are a new element. Their control is not the prime concern of the NHS. It is a Government function and Government should rid us of these disturbing elements.
Some of this has arisen from the enabling legislation of 1972 or 1974 directed at the reorganisation of the service. I well remember the long hours of debate that we got involved in. Much of it seemed complex and unconvincing to me, and doubtless to many others; we were just presented with a vast bureaucratic upheaval or earthquake, much of which was wished on us and was just too complicated. So it has turned out to be, and now we are finding that the control is too complex and far too expensive, and it is

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proposed that it be simplified. With this we must agree. There is at least one too many among the tiers of control, expensive in itself.
All this reorganisation requires thinking out again and modifying. Whether improvement will result it is difficult to say, but something must be done, and again it is the Government's task to do so. It is not the responsibility of the NHS, which seems to share the blame, but is a function of the Government and it falls to them to correct it; to try among other things to control the disturbing elements that are doing so much harm and are chiefly responsible for the disturbing things the Motion speaks of. Let us get the affairs of our NHS in order and make it again something of which we can all he proud.
8.18 p.m.
Lord HENLEY: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for giving us the opportunity to discuss the various problems which beset the National Health Service. Many of those who have spoken can justly claim to be experts on the subject of the Health Service, and I especially wish to include the two maiden speakers whom I join other speakers in congratulating. I am afraid I have no expertise at all and I can only speak from my own recent personal experiences as a patient under the National Health Service.
The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, does not seem to think that many on these Benches use the NHS. Like my noble kinsman Lord Auckland, I have made full use of it. I spent the whole of last week and the week before in the Middlesex Hospital; I was there under the auspices of the NHS and not privately. I was taken in rather suddenly and so there was no question of any delay, and I can therefore say nothing about the problems of long waiting lists for less pressing treatment. Others, notably Lord Winstanley and my noble friend Lord Gisborough, have mentioned this problem this afternoon. I am sure it exists but I am not qualified to speak on it. All I can do is give my impressions of the NHS as I saw it from my bed in the Middlesex Hospital. It might be that my views are of very little relevance. The Middlesex Hospital is one of the large London
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teaching hospitals and for all I know it is not typical in any way of NHS hospitals; I have never been to any NHS hospitals, or to any hospitals for that matter, in all my life since I was born and therefore do not know much about them. I suppose that one of the great teaching hospitals has much greater resources to command than do many of the regional hospitals. At the same time, I imagine that it has many disadvantages in being in Central London, with relatively old buildings, rather crowded. I must add that while I was there I was completely unaffected by any industrial action, or any other disaster, and so my experience is probably totally untypical of what other people have had to undergo. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have to say will not be entirely irrelevant to the debate.
I will not keep your Lordships very long because I want to say only one thing; namely, how very impressed I was with the whole set-up. The picture of the Health Service painted in the Press has very little in common with what I saw. Some newspapers would have us believe that the whole system is falling apart at the seams, that it totally fails to meet the needs of the patients. In fact, from reading the Press it is very easy to be rather frightened of going into hospital at all; I certainly was. There are fears that strikes will prevent any oil getting in or food being cooked, and one reads reports of the wrong foot being cut off or of some other ghastly amputation. I suppose that all these things can in fact happen, but again I hope that they are not necessarily typical.
I have absolutely no complaints about the manner in which I was treated by all the staff at the Middlesex, whether the doctors themselves, the nurses, or even the dreaded ancillary workers, who many have criticised this afternoon. They seem to be rather partial to various industrial disturbances of one kind or another, and as a result they are very much a bête noire in the eyes of the Press. But they caused me no problems while I was there, so I am not going to criticise them. If I might, I should particularly like to thank the nursing staff with whom obviously I came into most contact. Despite the long hours they work, despite very difficult patients—and I expect I was probably one of those difficult patients—and despite their relatively low pay, I do not think I saw

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any ever lose their temper or behave in anything but an exemplary manner. They deserve all the praise they receive.
I have already said that I do not know whether what I saw in the Middlesex was in any way typical of the National Health Service, and I am prepared to concede that it probably might not be in that it is a large hospital with large resources. I think that it has about 750 beds and a staff of over 3,000. I have not checked those figures; I do not know whether they are correct. But my experience does at least show that parts of the Health Service are working well and efficiently and are meeting the needs of the patients, which after all is what the debate is supposed to be about. I do not want to sound complacent, but things do not really seem to be as bad as some people would have one believe. The Health Service might not be perfect, it might have a great many failings, but what I saw from my bed appeared to be a highly efficient hospital. It would be a credit to any health service.
8.24 p.m.
The Countess of LOUDOUN: My Lords, services for the elderly are one of the current National Health Service priorities, along with those for the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped, and children; and it is about this first group, the elderly, that I should like to say a few words. The major problem of mental illness is now the dementias of old people, and it is therefore impossible to plan services for the old and the mentally ill separately. As people grow older certain organs, in particular the brain, tend to lose a number of cells. In most people this gradual loss has no effect at all, but dementia occurs in elderly people whose brain cell loss is abnormally heavy. This may take the form of depression, which is a psychotic disorder, where the sufferer's mood sinks to a level not experienced by someone who is mentally healthy, and can lead to suicide; or paraphrenia, a form of schizophrenia in elderly people, which is likely to affect those suffering from loneliness, poor vision, or deafness. This is a feeling of not being wanted, a type of persecution mania.
In the less acute stages of brain cell loss stress on an elderly person can cause the mental state diagnosed as confusion,
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where a person can be alert and articulate one minute and drowsy and incoherent the next. But where the cell loss is abnormally heavy the resulting dementia is permanent, irreversible, and tends to get worse. Although nothing will change a person with dementia back into someone who is mentally normal, it is possible to slow down the process of deterioration. There is an urgent need for more counselling services for the elderly, particularly in times of crisis such as those caused by bereavement, retirement, loneliness, or ill-heath, which can be major upheavals to those concerned.
Then there are the dangers of overmedication and mal-medication, all of which can be potential causes of mental ill health; yet little gets done about them. Though most GPs are conscientious and utterly trustworthy, there are some who automatically dish out tranquillisers rather than try to find the cause of the problem. There are those doctors who issue repeat prescriptions without even seeing the patient.
I think that one must recognise that some forms of mental disorder are avoidable altogether, and that others can be handled successfully if proper care and attention are available at an early stage. Assessment of the elderly patient by both health and social services staff, preferably at home where the patient feels most at ease, is vital. And what then? Owing to the piecemeal development of residential services by both the National Health Service and local authorities these services for elderly, mentally infirm people are at best inadequate and at worst untenable. The only answer, surely, is joint planning between local authorities, the Health Service, and voluntary organisations, to develop a range of residential services which complement each other and offer a choice to meet the needs of individuals.
The Health Advisory Service has for years expressed concern about the quality of life in geriatric and psychiatric hospitals, many of which fall short of acceptable standards. Can the Government tell us when the report of the working party on management of hospitals is likely to be published? Can the Government see any virtue in giving psychiatric hospitals more control over their own hospitals, so that those responsible can plan their own

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budgets? There is a shortage of staff, both trained and untrained, in these hospitals. Many nurses prefer not to look after mentally disturbed old people, though this, one of the most demanding branches of nursing, is also one of the most rewarding, calling for personal qualities and skills of a high order. A high proportion of the staff are men and women from overseas who have given invaluable service in psychiatric and geriatric hospitals, but problems sometimes arise due to an imperfect command of English and the fact that they come from cultures with different assumptions and conventions.
But apart from the elderly, mentally infirm person living in some kind of residential provision, there are many more living in the community, mostly with their families. Surely one of our priorities must be to maintain these elderly people in the community for as long as possible, thus easing the strain on hospital and local authority provision. But to achieve this we must aim at complete co-operation between health and social services staff, including social workers and community psychiatric nurses. This would cut out some of the waste now prevalent due to overlap and ensure that the best possible use is made of resources already available to the patient, without necessarily spending more money. Cooperation and co-ordination between all the statutory and voluntary services involved in the care of elderly, mentally ill and infirm people is essential if we are to allow them the quality of life to which they are entitled and allow them to be treated with the humanity and respect to which they have a right.
8.30 p.m.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, we are now approaching the end of a somewhat long but extremely useful debate, and I should like to congratulate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, and his party for initiating it. The noble Lord may recall that some years ago he had the responsibility of whipping me off, in an emergency, to Westminster Hospital. I have now fully recovered, although they never in fact discovered what was wrong with me. I should also like to congratulate the two maiden speakers, the noble Earl, Lord Erne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of
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Warsaw. We look forward very much indeed to their participation in the future. There are two other speakers that I should like to thank and congratulate. 1 have called them "the dynamic pair". They are the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy de Knayth. I hope that the message that those two energetic Members of this House put forward will be accepted and dealt with, as indeed they have the greatest possible public sympathy.
While I agree that severe problems exist in the National Health Service, nevertheless the service compares favourably with conditions in many other countries. Those of us who have been faced with a sudden disaster overseas realise the sense of relief when a member of the family is eventually returned to National Health Service care in Britain, and receives that high standard of medical and, particularly, nursing care which still exists at home. In passing, I should like to pay a personal tribute to one aspect of health care and service that is hardly ever mentioned. I should like to pay a personal tribute to the fine standard of service at Heathrow Airport Medical Centre, so often the point of transhipment for those stricken with sudden illness or accident overseas. The service is admirable, compassionate and efficient.
I deplore attempts to "knock" the National Health Service in order to advance private schemes. Harsh words indeed have been used earlier in this debate. Medical need should not be subject to financial considerations. I believe strongly that the best possible treatment should be available to the sick in body or mind, irrespective of class, colour or creed. Freedom of choice most certainly, Yes, but no question of first- or second-class citizens. It is true that today the National Health Service faces severe problems, not all of them financial. At all levels of staff there is evidence of low morale. What has gone wrong? There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the primary cause is the disastrous reorganisation carried out by a Conservative Government and engineered by Sir Keith Joseph. On the Third Reading of the Bill in another place I warned him of the chaos that would arise, and my worst fears have indeed been confirmed. The result has been a bureaucratic monster smothering patient care with mountains of paper work,

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and faceless individuals with electronic calculators producing incomprehensible statistics on bed norms. I always thought a bed norm was a parasite: on second thoughts, perhaps I was right.
I do not want, in any case, to show too much political bias in this debate. I am now going to support my arguments with a quotation from a very useful document which the noble Baroness herself has no doubt read. This is from a working party on "the Cinderella service". It says:
"The Working Party found widespread criticism of the reorganisation of the National Health Service, which had resulted in low nursing morale. There was a feeling that the service had been depersonalised because the level of effective management was now so far from the level of clinical practice. The administrative structure was top-heavy, with one tier of authority too many. Lines of communication were over extended and considerable overlap of responsibility had almost submerged nurses in paperwork, and had added to postage and telephone costs. All the respondents stated that this was one of their principal frustrations".
I could go on, because this is an excellent report; and, for the record, it is a "Report on the Nursing Profession presented by a working party of the Women's National Advisory Committee of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations". I commend the reading of this document, but it shows the criticism that I have already made in my speech.
There is no doubt whatever that reorganisation was a disaster, but the comment made in this report on the nursing profession applies to all levels of staff. I agree with the report entirely that there is one tier too many. We are now told that area authorities are to be phased out and replaced by some 200 district authorities. Great care will have to be taken to avoid another upheaval, leading to a further lowering of morale. There will be staff redundancies, and careers will be blighted. Those responsible for sorting it all out will have an agonising job. I know only too well, because I had to take part in those agonising procedures, when we had a short list of officers, for all of whom we had the highest respect and all of whom had excellent records, and we had to choose one for a post, the others having to go searching elsewhere. Some of them, excellent people, had to leave the service. In fact, one of my officers emigrated to New Zealand to get out of the country;
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he was fed up to the teeth with the situation.
Every effort must indeed be made to return to more localised control, creating a more corporate entity, staff loyalty and sense of unity. Newly appointed district authority committees must go out of their way to be known by staffs, collectively and individually. That was the strength of the management committees before reorganisation—trust and confidence on both sides. It is also essential that members appointed have local knowledge and experience.
Now I come to industrial relations, and may I say that I agree almost entirely with the speech on this subject made by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, who has a great experience in this field, as we all know. From the old atmosphere of loyalty and dedication, we now have the problem of industrial relations, which became severe last winter and continues today in incidents which can bring comfort to no one. Faults exist on both sides. No-strike contracts are not the answer. They may possibly be negotiated, but reality must be faced. Dispute situations will still arise unless a better atmosphere is created. I am well aware of the disputes procedures put into operation by my honourable friend David Ennals when he was Secretary of State. Admirable as they are if fully carried out in good spirit, they do not go deep enough to the source. Something additional is needed; and what I say about those procedures is also what is in the mind of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, in the proposals that are coming, to which we are all looking forward. Something more is needed.
What is the answer? May I submit it, with all humility, in three words: communication, consultation and cooperation. Hospitals are communities in themselves, but abound in rumours—small, perhaps, but if not dealt with they snowball into disputes; and those of us who have connections with hospitals in any way know how quickly rumours can spread. Area health authorities have joint consultative committees with union representation, but their field is limited. Hospital JCCs rarely exist, and in fact are frowned upon by some chairmen and administrators in case secret decisions and discussions are leaked. I, after some

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difficulty with my area health authority, did get one set up in a certain local hospital. It was set up with elected staff and I can say with definite assurance that it worked well and re-created trust and confidence. Some of the old goodwill and good spirit has returned. Although I had to resign when I became a Lord-in-Waiting, I understand that the committee is still continuing with some good effect.
Nothing is lost and much is gained by taking hospital staffs into full consultation and providing information. Patient care means dependence on all levels of staff working together: doctors, nurses, technicians, catering staff, porters, domestics and many others are all primary units in a team. There is no comparable industrial set-up elsewhere to compare with it. The tendency since reorganisation has been to regard administration as the primary factor. The service, in my view—and I have some experience in this field—is over administered. There has to be a new concentration on communication to all levels. There must be a joint consultative system at hospital level comprising elected representatives of all levels of staff together with management: lay and professional. There must be a full and free discussion and maximum information.
Trust in staff will in turn create greater trust and confidence in management. Reduction of the present bureaucratic mess and creation of a system of consultation and co-operation will not only improve morale and patient care, but could lead to better financial control. In my little JCC we had suggestions how money could be saved. I am sure that the staff could make intelligent and constructive solutions and suggestions if only they were given the opportunity to do so. The suggested change of abandoning AHAs gives a great opportunity to create a far better atmosphere which in turn would eradicate much of the dispute situation which exists today, which I am sure we all deplore.
In conclusion, may I say this. No one in his right mind wants the National Health Service to become a political battleground. We are all in it together; we can all make our constructive contributions. Our aim is, and must be, to reconstruct a service which has been, and can still be, the finest in the world.
8.43 p.m.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, at this time of night I feel that I should be as short as I can, but I should like to start by saying how gratified I was that so many things that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, has said are exactly how we see things ourselves. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has frequently admitted that the reorganisation in 1974–1975 was a mistake, and that is something to which he is turning his attention now and the consultation document will be out by the end of this year. It is expected that that consultation will take six months or so and thereafter matters can be gradually dealt with and not rushed.
We should be more than grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for initiating this debate. It has been to me extremely interesting and I have learned a lot this evening. We have had very distinguished speakers and again I feel many of those speakers will be rather pleased when they see the consultation document before the end of this year. There is much agreement between Government thinking and many of the speeches that I have heard this evening.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, spoke of the workload which will be increasing. There is no question that that is so with the prospect over the next decade of an ageing population. The noble Lord made a balanced and very fair speech. He did not attack either noble Lords opposite or ourselves for the cuts or things that have gone wrong; he made constructive suggestions as to what could be done in the future to make improvements. I thought that he made a lot of extremely useful points, and I have no doubt that they will be much appreciated by my right honourable friend. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, made a rather sharp attack. I cannot help asking him why, as the Party opposite was in power for five years, if they really thought that the reorganisation was so erroneous, they did not take any part in altering it.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, may I briefly say that I was going to mention that in my speech. I was furious one day in this House. I was having tea and I met Mrs. Barbara Castle. I said, "For God's sake reorganise the Health Service" She said:

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"George, it has been mucked up enough already, we cannot give alarm and despondency to the staff. You will have to wait."
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, perhaps it is more suitable that we should reorganise the Service again, having reorganised it wrongly in the first place. I may take rather a long time in reply because I have an enormous number of notes, there have been rather a lot of speakers and a great many points raised. I will answer some questions now and write to a number of speakers whom I cannot answer.
The noble Lord referred to community health councils and asked me a particular question. One community health council was prevented from taking action. We know which one and I will write to the noble Lord setting out the situation as we sec it. My honourable friend the Minister of State is meeting the Association of CHCSs tomorrow and I would rather deal with the matter in the light of that meeting. My noble friend Lord Erne made an excellent speech. I should like to congratulate him on it. It was short, to the point, and non-controversial. I hope that we shall hear from him many times in the future.
He asked me two questions: one was about infant mortality. An advisory committee on infant mortality and handicap was appointed in November 1978 by the former Minister of State for Northern Ireland with responsibility for health and social services, the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, to advise on the whole range of preventive and caring measures in the field of infant death and handicap, and to make recommendations for action. In addition to a medical chairman, there are 12 members on the committee, two community physicians, one university; two obstetricians, one university; two paediatricians; two general medical practitioners; a midwife; a social worker; a health visitor and a layman having a particular interest in socio-economic an d environmental factors. The work of eight sub-groups set up by the committee is now almost completed, and their reports are to be considered during the next few months. The advisory committee hopes to complete its work before next summer, when it is likely that its report will be published.
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The second question the noble Earl asked me concerned continuing problems in maintaining acute hospital services in the Western area to which he referred. A joint working party comprising representatives of the Department of Health and Social Services for Northern Ireland and the Western Health and Social Services Board was set up in 1976 to study the existing provision of hospital care and to make recommendations on the pattern of service which would best ensure stability for the future.
The working party's report recommended that acute services should be based at two centres only, namely, Londonderry and Enniskillen, and that a number of existing hospitals should become community hospitals, including Tyrone and County Armagh which at present provide acute services. No final decisions have yet been taken, however. The Western board, which is at present consulting a wide variety of interests, is to submit its conclusions to the Minister of State charged with responsibility for health and social services in Northern Ireland. The Minister then intends to consult interested parties further before taking a final decision.
We then had a most fascinating speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder. It was a joy to listen to and I hope we hear from her often again. We are, of course, aware of and deeply grateful for the work of the Ryder Foundation and other voluntary organisations. We intend to encourage voluntary effort. There are obvious limits to what can be done in the present circumstances, but we shall do what we can to support voluntary effort.
My noble friend Lord Gisborough then spoke. He referred to making better use of ancillary staff and to seeing that overmanning is cut out wherever possible. However, I think my noble friend was painting a slightly unfair picture. The overwhelming majority of ancillary staff do sometimes very important work effectively and have the best interests of the service firmly in view. We had very sad occasions last winter which I hope we shall never see again; but I think we must remember the good rather than the militant minority. My noble friend also mentioned administration, and again I think he will appreciate our consultative paper when it comes out later this year.

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The noble Lord, Lord Pitt, referred to some of the deprived areas of London and to the Resource Allocation Working Party. He queried whether or not London was properly looked after in this respect. I think this is rather a big question to go into tonight, and I will write to the noble Lord on that score. He also referred to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital which, as noble Lords know, is being kept open but not with all the services that it previously had.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, spoke on the subject of Stoke Mandeville Hospital, of which she has spoken several times before. I do not think I can say much to her this evening because, as she told the House, my honourable friend the Minister of State, Dr. Vaughan, is visiting the hospital on 20th November and I think that if I said anything about that in the meantime it would be inappropriate. The noble Baroness also spoke about the importance of volunteers, as have many other speakers; and we are entirely in favour of making the maximum use of volunteers both in good times and in bad, and also of supporting and encouraging voluntary organisations wherever we can.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, spoke about hospital closures. I think I must say that no Government of whatever colour likes closing hospitals. The policy of Her Majesty's Government is to keep open all the hospitals they possibly can, and particularly small hospitals. I know people get very fond of their local hospitals and even though the facilities may be greater in a larger hospital some way away, they would rather go to the hospital which they know.
The noble Baroness mentioned waiting lists and, of course, we share her concern, but getting waiting lists down is not going to be easy. They have risen by 50 per cent. in the last five years—from 500,000 to 750,000 or so—and it would certainly be our greatest wish to reduce those waiting lists as quickly as we possibly can. We hope that the restructuring of the National Health Service will help towards that end.
The noble Baroness also mentioned the cut-back in personal social services: again, most regrettable. But social ser-
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vices cannot be isolated from other forms of public expenditure. Unhappily, the public expenditure plans of the previous Administration were based on an expectation of growth of, I believe, 2 to 3 per cent. which, as we all know very well, did not occur. Without making any particular aggressive party point, it is rather a mystery to me why they actually expected such a growth rate, because during the period of their time in Office I do not think they ever got anywhere near that. However, the cut-back in the social services is certainly regretted and my noble friend has made it very clear that he hopes the elderly, the sick and the deprived people will suffer to the least possible extent, and that will be for local people to look after.
I was asked for the level of expenditure on health as a proportion of total public expenditure programmes, and the noble Baroness gave earlier figures. The figures for which she asked are for 1974–75, 11·8 per cent.; 1975–76, 12·2 per cent.; 1976–77, 12·7 per cent.; 1977–78, 13·4 per cent.; 1978–79, 13·1 per cent. and we anticipate 12·6 per cent. for 1979–80.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I entirely agree with so much of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester. He has very great experience in this field and his words will be read with great interest by my right honourable friend. I thought that we had an immensely impressive speech by the noble Lord, Lord Richardson, the chairman of the General Medical Council. It seemed to me that both his speech and the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Smith, covered so many of the things that we feel. His concern over the morale and discipline of the service, the wish to look beyond self-interest and to encourage local pride in the work, is exactly the kind of thing that we ourselves are after. I am sorry to be taking rather a long time over this, but there were a lot of speeches.
My noble friend Lord Auckland asked me several questions. He spoke about the need for better nurses' accommodation. I am sure that this is an important matter, but, though we sympathise with what he said, our philosophy is to leave it to local people to determine local arrangements and priorities. I do not think it would be right for central Government to determine local priorities, in the way that my noble friend suggested. He also asked

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me when we were going to go further with the recommendations of the Briggs Committee. I am afraid I cannot answer that, but I will write to my noble friend on that point. My noble friend inquired what was happening about nurses' pay. Of course, the Clegg Commission is looking at this and will be reporting early in the New Year. The Clegg award will be implemented in two equal stages, with effect from August, 1979, and April, 1980, and we shall be honouring the commitment made by our predecessors.
The noble Baroness, Lady Darcy de Knayth, also spoke about Stoke Mandeville, so I must give her the same answer that I gave to her noble friend Lady Masham. She asked too about the missing £400,000. I will ensure that my right honourable friend the Minister of State looks into this matter, and will write to the noble Baroness as soon as possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Gravesend, spoke about the cuts. I think that my noble friend Lady Young put the position very clearly as to what actual cuts are being made, and what is the position over the two-year period. He definitely had a point about the I per cent. increase which is necessary to maintain services at the same standards. But without talking party politics, we inherited a rather difficult situation. As I said, there was an expectation of growth of 2 to 3 per cent. by the Labour Party. I do not blame them for that. It must be extremely difficult to work out these things. Anyway, the final effect is that there is not as much money in the kitty as we should like to have.
Also, I am sure it is true to say that had the Labour Government been re-elected they would have had to cut back on public expenditure. The money was not there. They would have had the alternatives of very high increases in taxation or of borrowing money from abroad, and I doubt whether they would have wanted to do that again. I do not think I shall go any further into that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Murray, also suggested that the NHS might be exempted from the payment of VAT. I am sure that a lot of people would like to be exempted from the payment of VAT.
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When VAT was first introduced, it was decided that health authorities and most other public bodies should pay VAT. Extra resources were given to health authorities to enable them to meet the extra cost, and it is intended that cash limits for 1980–81 will include provision for the full year effect of the June, 1979, increase in VAT.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, answered many of the points which have been made today and said many of the things that I know my right honourable friends at the Department of Health and Social Security themselves feel. We agree with the noble Lord's observations in so many ways—in particular, about not knocking the National Health Service without appreciating its achievements over the years. We were extremely lucky to have so many distinguished speakers, and I immensely enjoyed the noble Lord's speech.
My noble friend Lord Colwyn, who is also to speak tomorrow evening on the subject of fluoride, talked of the need for flexibility and setting new structures. I think he will find that our proposals will provide for flexibility. He talked of uncertainty. Uncertainty is never good for morale. I think he should wait until the consultative document comes out, with which I believe he will be pleased.
The noble Lord, Lord Brock, spoke about ancillary workers and also about structure. I have covered both of those points in dealing with other speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, spoke of his spell in the Middlesex Hospital. It was very encouraging to hear my noble friend's account of his stay there. I am sure that his experience is typical. Indeed, consumer surveys of the service show high levels of satisfaction with the quality of care which is given.
The noble Countess, Lady Loudoun, spoke of services for the elderly mentally disturbed. She has drawn attention to a very real problem—one which has not, perhaps, been given the attention that it deserves. We are anxious to see improvements in services for this group of patients. In general, I agree with the noble Countess's remarks and will write to her shortly setting out how we see policies developing over the next few years. The

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report of the working group on the management of mental illness hospitals will be published soon, hopefully by Christmas or early in the New Year.
I have done my best to deal with the points which have been raised by noble Lords. I shall, as I promised, write to noble Lords on any questions to which I have not replied.
9.12 p.m.
Lord WINSTANLEY: My Lords, as the mover of this Motion it would normally be appropriate for me merely to say a few quick words of thanks to all those who have spoken, congratulate the maiden speakers—which I shall do with all possible warmth in a moment—and then beg leave to withdraw the Motion and sit down. However, may I crave the indulgence of the House and say that these are not entirely normal circumstances for me, in that this is one of the two debates in this House for which my noble friends on this Bench are allowed to choose the subject. Normally it would be the practice of the House for one of my noble friends to say a few words so as to tie up the ends above the line, as it were. However, as I informed the House, my noble friend Lady Robson of Kiddington was suddenly snatched to the grass roots of the Health Service to deal with a very urgent hospital crisis and was unable, therefore, to perform this function. Then my noble friend Lady Seear, who was to take her place, was suddenly taken ill and had to go home. Therefore we had nobody in that particular position.
I shall be very brief. This creates no precedent, but I hope that I am not abusing the courtesy of the House if I say a few words more. Of course, I have not been entirely alone. I had excellent support from my noble friend Lord Rochester who, I thought, made a most balanced and thoughtful speech. I was deeply grateful to both the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, and the noble Lord, Lord Cullen of Ashbourne, for the way in which they so readily embraced his words, took them on board and promised to think further about them. This was particularly gratifying to me because I was most impressed by what was said by my noble friend. As has been said, he has great experience and I
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am delighted to know that his wisdom is not to be totally disregarded.
I also had eloquent support from the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, who made a most balanced and interesting speech, for which I was most grateful. If he did nothing else, surely he will have convinced even the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, that the Benches opposite are not entirely occupied by the serried ranks of BUPA.
Perhaps I should also say that I had the most sterling support from what was so eloquently described by the noble Baroness, Lady D'Arcy de Knayth, as the "mobile bench". Perhaps noble Lords will think it not inappropriate that a noble Lord on the Liberal Bench should have some affinity with those on the mobile bench, but I was delighted to know that our views are clearly reciprocated on that mobile bench. The noble Baroness and also the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, stressed the importance of specialised units and the great importance of nationalised funding of those units. That is something which I would certainly like to underline. I believe also underlying their words was the point that it is really a waste of resources for everybody to be trying to do everthing on a small scale when some things can be done so very much better in specialised units such as that particular one which I know so well and for which they were speaking so eloquently.
I must now come rapidly to two very distinguished and impressive maiden speeches. The noble Earl, Lord Erne, warned us of the danger of being too preoccupied with what happens in London and other major conurbations. How right he is! And how better to remind us of that than to hear a voice that comes from a rural area just about as far from London as one could possibly get? It was really a great pleasure to hear him and I hope we shall hear him on many more occasions.
He reminded us, too, of the existence of what I had begun to think was an endangered species—the single-handed GP, were it not that the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, actually claimed to be one. But when the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, said, "I am a single-handed GP" I seemed to detect that somehow quietly under his breath he said, "and God bless the emergency call service"! I mention

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that merely to stress that we do have new developments in medicine. We have group practice, but with group practice I think there is a feeling that somehow the old close personal relationship that used to exist with the single-handed GP is disappearing. It is a fact that it really is rather difficult to establish a very close personal relationship with an emergency call service. So it was delightful to hear that there still are single-handed GPs.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? When I started my practice, for the first five years I did night service for a doctor who lived down the road, so having a deputising service is not as new as all that.
Lord WINSTANLEY: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. With regard to the brief quarrel (if I may so describe it) between the two Front Benches, naturally I took no part in it because it happened after I had spoken. I will only say this: the subject of private practice cropped up. I have no brief for private practice, but I would say both to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, that the one thing that private practice does is to act—or it can act—as a very sensitive barometer of what is happening in the public sector. That is true not only of health but also of education. When one suddenly sees a growth in the private sector, and a growth in the demand for private practice, then one should start to look immediately and carefully at what has happened to the public sector. It is my honest view that for those who wish to get rid of private practice there is no better way than to improve the Health Service. Where hospitals are new, where waiting-lists are short, where doctors' lists are manageable, one looks in vain for private practice.
So far as finance is concerned, that, too, was interesting in so far as there was a dispute between the two Front Benches. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, will forgive me if I say that there were a great many things which his Government—if I may so call it—would have liked to do and believed they ought to have done, had the money to do those things been available. But the money was
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not available at that time, and therefore I do not criticise the late Government for not doing some of those things. But the money is still not available. I am by no means convinced that the new Government are necessarily on the right course in order to get that money and to make it available. It may be they are and it may be they are not; time will show, but at least I am personally very grateful indeed for what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said. She said, clearly and unmistakably, that she personally and her colleagues would like to spend more on the National Health Service, and when we had more money they would spend more on the National Health Service. I hope that, if and when that time comes and if and when her Government are in power, she will have great influence to make absolutely sure that that undertaking is fully and effectively carried out.
We heard two excellent speeches from two most distinguished doctors, Lord Richardson and Lord Smith—if the noble Lord, Lord Smith, a surgeon, is prepared to accept the term "doctor" in its broadest sense. I think they made most interesting contributions. Lord Richardson stressed the need for a new mood, or perhaps, more appropriately, a return go an old mood, which was well recollected by the noble Lord, Lord Brock. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, used the words "rationing of health care is a fact". I accept that. I would merely say to him and others who heard those words that I think he would agree with me that people practising medicine today and in recent years, in whatever capacity, even as the president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, have been forced to cut corners in order to get work done at all, but they have cut corners on a random basis. When I talk about the need for some cost-effective studies about some of our routine procedures what I am in reality saying is that it is high time we learned not how to cut corners on a random basis merely because we have to, but how to cut corners on a planned and calculated basis so as to minimise risk and maximise use of resources which are in desperately short supply.
I could go on and on. I really am so grateful to so many noble Lords for taking part in this debate on a very important subject. I think noble Lords have had

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very important contributions to make. I could have gone on and on referring to their speeches, but I am sure your Lordships would not wish me to. I should merely like to thank each and every noble Lord who has taken part, and those who have come and listened to noble Lords who have taken part.
Once again I congratulate the two maiden speakers on remarkable speeches. I do not think I finished on the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw. I know that I speak for every Member of this House when I say that we are very proud to have her in our House and we hope she will speak to us very often about her wonderful work. How right she was to remind us of the benefits of priming the pumps of the voluntary sector and to remind us that if the Government try to save money by ceasing to prime those pumps they will pay very dearly for that so-called economy! My Lords, I am most grateful to all who have taken part, and with those words I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I say this: The fact that I remained silent when he referred to what I had said with regard to the private sector must not be understood by him that I am in complete agreement. It is merely that because of the hour I am exercising very great control.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

FELIXSTOWE DOCK AND RAILWAY BILL
Queen's Consent signified: reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee with amendments.
RESIDENTIAL HOMES BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee with an amendment, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House; Bill to be printed as amended.
  THE STING RAY ANTI-SUBMARINE TORPEDO
  THE STING RAY ANTI-SUBMARINE TORPEDO