Sitting of 23 November 1982

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN

  BRITISH SUMMER TIME
  The VICE-CHAMBLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address, as follows:
  I have received your Address praying that the Summer Time Order 1982 be made in the form of the draft that was laid before your House.
  I will comply with your request.

PRIVATE BUSINESS
  HIGHLAND REGION (BANAVIE LEVEL CROSSING) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
  Considered; to be read the Third time.

  COMMANDER TRESTRAIL
  Resolved,
  That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, That she will be graciously pleased to give directions that there will be laid before this House a Return of a Report of an Inquiry by the Right honourable Lord Bridge of Harwich into the appointment as The Queen's Police Officer, and the activities, of Commander Trestrail; to determine whether security was breached or put at risk, and advise whether in consequence any change in security arrangements is necessary or desirable.—[Mr. Mayhew.]

Oral Answers to Questions
  EMPLOYMENT

    Unemployment Statistics
    Mr. Skinnerasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will provide the latest unemployment figures, both nationally and regionally; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Dykesasked the Secretary of State for Employment when he expects to see a reduction in the numbers of registered unemployed in the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Winnickasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will give the latest number of those who are unemployed in the United Kingdom; and if he will make a statement.
    The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Norman Tebbit): At 14 October the number of unemployed people claiming benefit in the United Kingdom was 3,049,008. The comparable regional figures were published in the press notice issued by my Department on 18 November. A copy is in the House of Commons Library.
    Lower inflation and interest rates provide a firmer base from which industry and commerce can regain lost customers at home and abroad, thereby generating more jobs. The timing and extent of that cannot be predicted and depends upon the ability of those concerned to offer lower prices, better quality, speedier delivery and better service than their foreign competitors.
    Mr. Skinner: Who can believe those figures after what has happened in the past few weeks? Instead of fiddling the figures, why does not the Minister for unemployment and his partner in crime, the Prime Minister, do something about reducing the real figures of unemployment? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that as a result of the resolve that was shown during the Falklands invasion and the money that was found for that effort, the British people now know that money is available and that it can be used to reduce unemployment? Does he agree that money is also available to reduce the working week to 35 hours and the retirement age to 60? Moreover—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is not being fair to other hon. Members.
    Mr. Tebbit: The hon. Gentleman could have done better than that. Perhaps he would consider the support that he gave to a pay claim of 31 per cent. Perhaps he would also consider whether, if it had been granted—indeed, if it had been supported by the people for whom the hon. Gentleman purports to speak—it would have caused more unemployment or generated more new jobs.
    Mr. Dykes: As existing measures and policies seem unlikely, on balance, to produce a fall in unemployment, when does my right hon. Friend consider that additional measures will be necessary?
    Mr. Tebbit: Perhaps my hon. Friend did not hear the latter part of my reply. I emphasised that it was the

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    business of those in commerce and industry so to conduct their affairs that they became sufficiently competitive to win back markets that have been lost.
    Mr. Winnick: Does the Secretary of State agree that the fresh wave of redundancies and closures that are sweeping through the West Midlands give the lie to any claim of economic recovery? Is he aware that a parliamentary reply that I received last week stated that the highest recorded unemployment in the West Midlands prior to the present Government coming into office was 6½ per cent.? Is he further aware that it is now 16½ per cent., and rising? Why should the West Midlands be turned into a wasteland as a result of the right hon. Gentleman's disastrous policies?
    Mr. Tebbit: If the West Midlands had learnt earlier the lesson that it has now learnt—that it is essential to rid industry of people such as Red Robbo and Mr. Thornett and get on with the business of producing motor cars instead of calling politically motivated strikes—there would be far more jobs in the West Midlands today.
    Sir Nicholas Bonsor: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the best long-term hope of providing more employment lies in the encouragement of small industries? Will he further confirm that the Government have taken more than 95 specific measures to encourage new small industries and that they are having a substantial effect?
    Mr. Tebbit: My hon. Friend is right. The worst possible result for all concerned in industry would be achieved if anyone was barmy enough to believe that the way out of our problems lies through a devaluation of 30 per cent. in sterling parity or in the sort of talk that we heard today from the right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore). The right hon. Gentleman confessed that the programme of the Labour Party which a week or so ago was a commitment to reduce unemployment is now not a commitment, not a promise, not a pledge, but only a hope.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: As the Secretary of State has persistently argued that the rise in unemployment is due to the world recession, will he confirm that the increase in Britain has been more than twice that of the average of all other Western industrial countries since May 1979? Will he also confirm that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was unable to give the TUC any prospect of immediate or rapid recovery?
    Mr. Tebbitt: The right hon. Lady over-simplifies matters. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I have persistently pointed out that there are several causes of unemployment. One is the recession. A second is the uncompetitiveness of British industry. A third is the degree of destocking of labour, if that is the right expression—the shaking out of labour—that has had to occur in many industries that were grossly overmanned. Many still are overmanned.
    The right hon. Lady should not seek to over-simplify matters by blaming the world recession. It plays a major, but not the only, part. What I found disappointing at the meeting last night between the TUC and my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and myself was the great difficulty that still exists in persuading the TUC of the need to make British industry more competitive.
    Mr. Varley: Will the right hon. Gentleman now tell the truth when he refers to what he claims is the Government's success in bringing down the year-on-year rate of inflation? Does he admit that it has been brought about through the whip of mass unemployment and the deliberate and systematic destruction of one-fifth of manufacturing industry?
    Mr. Tebbit: No, Sir. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman should persist with that question. It has been explained to him more than once that the high level of unemployment that we are experiencing is the cost, not of reducing levels of inflation, but of high levels of inflation, sparked off principally by the ridiculous policies of the Labour Government in the years when he was a Minister, during which time unemployment more than doubled.

    New Training Initiative
    Mr. Needhamasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he is satisfied with the progress of the new training initiative.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Peter Morrison): To date, yes, Sir.
    Mr. Needham: Will my hon. Friend congratulate the CBI on the tremendous efforts that it has made to find sufficient places for young people under the NTI? Is he satisfied that industry and commerce will be capable of finding suitable opportunities for the vast majority of young people next September?
    Mr. Morrison: I assure my hon. Friend that I congratulate the CBI constantly on what it has done to encourage industrialists and men of commerce to come forward as sponsors of the youth training scheme. By 1 September next year we shall have enough schemes, and I shall be satisfied.
    Mr. Barry Jones: Is there not a glaring deficiency when tens of thousands of 17-year-olds are not likely to be included in the scheme? Does not the scheme emphasise the plight of the long-term unemployed aged between 20 and 25? Is it not time that the Government provided a chance for the House to debate this important scheme?
    Mr. Morrison: We hope to be able to accommodate unemployed 17-year-olds. For the 20 to 25 age group, the community programme can help. The question of a debate is for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and the right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. Silkin) the Shadow Leader of the House.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that we shall make greater progress if hon. Members who are called to put supplementary questions ask only one. This will enable other hon. Members to be called.

    Unemployment Statistics
    Mr. Chapmanasked the Secretary of State for Employment by how much unemployment has increased in the past 10 years; and what changes there have been in the numbers employed in the professional, business and financial sectors.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. David Waddington): In the 10 years to June 1982 there

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    was an increase in unemployment of 2,180,000. Over the same period, employment in insurance, banking, finance and business services, and professional and scientific services, increased by 783,000.
    Mr. Chapman: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the figures illustrate a great movement from one type of employment to another? Whatever the level of unemployment overall, or the prospects for jobs, is not the lesson to be learnt that if the Government make money available to promote jobs in industry it should be spent on promoting new businesses in new industries, not on preserving uneconomic jobs in declining industries?
    Mr. Waddington: My hon. Friend is right. It is perhaps appropriate to emphasise the importance of jobs in the service industries and how those jobs have expanded less rapidly in this country than elsewhere over the past 10 years. It is also important to recognise their importance in future.
    Mr. James Lamond: As the Minister has referred to the appalling increase in unemployment over the past 10 years, argued by the Secretary of State to be the fault of very one—business, the world recession and so on—except himself, will he say why we should continue to pay for the Department of Employment if it can do nothing? Is it not time that the Minister did a bit of labour destocking in his own Department?
    Mr. Waddington: I do not really blame the hon. Gentleman. Often, hon. Members prepare their supplementaries before hearing the Minister's answer. I did not say anything of the sort. I said that jobs in service industries have not increased as fast in this country in the past 10 years as they have, for instance, in the United States. That is a lesson for all of us to learn.
    Mr. Hal Miller: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the Labour Party's proposals to remedy the past 10 years of unemployment bear an uncanny resemblance to the French experience of rising inflation, rising unemployment, a wages and prices freeze, and cuts in social expenditure?
    Mr. Waddington: My right hon. Friend recently attended an EEC meeting at which every Minister spoke in similar terms about the absurd remedy put forward by the Labour Opposition. There is no other way forward than that put forward by the Government. It lies in making industry more competitive and reducing the rate of inflation.
    Mr. Foster: Is not the great distinction that under this Government employment in the service sector, far from rising, has been reducing since 1979? Will the hon. and learned Gentleman contemplate the effect on the north of England, where there are far too few jobs of this kind, which means that many of our able school leavers have to go elsewhere?
    Mr. Waddington: The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends fail to realise that many of these industries can only be supported by the profitability of manufacturing industries. The Labour Party's policies are devoted to making manufacturing industry less profitable.

    Wages Council Factory Inspectors
    Mr. Easthamasked the Secretary of State for Employment how many Department of Employment wages council factory inspectors there are.
    The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Mr. Michael Alison): On 1 September 1982 there were 116 outdoor inspectors and 13 senior wages inspectors in post.
    Mr. Eastham: As 12 months ago there were 177 factory inspectors, can the reduction be construed as meaning that the Government are encouraging firms to pay less than starvation wages and to break the law? Are the Government not ashamed that they are returning the nation to the 1930s?
    Mr. Alison: No. The hon. Gentleman cannot draw that conclusion. The number of inspectors has been reduced, but the efficiency of the inspectorate has increased.
    Mr. Radice: Is the Minister aware that the reduction in the number of inspectors has led to fewer inspections and the highest level of underpayment ever recorded? Does he understand that, far from encouraging employment, as the Government claim, they have given the green light to Scrooge-like employers?
    Mr. Alison: The hon. Gentleman gave the answer to his own question. I agree that there are fewer inspections. However, more establishments have been found to be in breach, which means that the inspections were deliberately focused on the places where the shortfalls were most likely to be found.

    Newcastle-under-Lyme
    Mr. Goldingasked the Secretary of State for Employment how many men and women, respectively, were unemployed in Newcastle-under-Lyme in May 1979 and at the latest date for which figures are available in 1982.
    Mr. Waddington: At May 1979 there were 1,209 males and 367 females registered as unemployed in the Newcastle-under-Lyme employment office area. The corresponding figures at October 1982 were 4,112 males and 1,726 females. The numbers of unemployed claimants at October 1982—from now on the count is based on claimants—were 3,663 males and 1,272 females.
    Mr. Golding: Is the Minister aware that as unemployment has more than trebled in my constituency great misery and tragedy have been brought to many families? Is he aware that in my locality, where there have been good industrial relations, low pay and good quality products, people believe that present redundancies and the further redundancies that are being declared are the result solely of the Government's economic policies?
    Mr. Waddington: I am fully aware of the misery and tragedy that can result from unemployment, but we must not fool people into believing that there are easy answers. The answers have been given often, as Opposition Members know in their hearts. They include making British industry more profitable, which is the only way in which new jobs can be created.
    Mr. Budgen: Will my hon. and learned Friend confirm that the recent devaluation of between 5 and 6 per cent.

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    will be extremely helpful to the pottery industry as well as to the heavy manufacturing industry in the West Midlands? Will he also confirm that the Government do not intend to attempt to reverse that devaluation by intervening on the foreign exchanges?
    Mr. Waddington: It is not for me to comment on my hon. Friend's last remark. That matter does not come within my province. My hon. Friend is entirely right to point to the help that will be given to industry as a result of the fall in value of the pound, for which the CBI has been calling for a long time.

    Community Programme
    Mr. Marksasked the Secretary of State for Employment what representations he has received from voluntary organisations about the Government's community programme for unemployed people.
    Mr. Alison: The community programme began on 1 October 1982 and the initial response from sponsors has been encouraging. By 8 November 4,041 temporary jobs under the programme had been approved and 60,000 further jobs are being negotiated with project sponsors. I am satisfied that the representations from voluntary organisations, which I listed in a reply to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) on 26 October, were based on a misunderstanding of the programme.
    Mr. Marks: Is the Minister aware that there is still considerable anxiety among voluntary organisations, which regard the scheme as cosmetic? They ask: what is the true cost of the scheme to the Government? Is it the same as for the original scheme that was announced? Will the Minister see the voluntary organisations on a national basis to consider the programme?
    Mr. Alison: We are always willing to see any voluntary organisation that wants to speak about the programme. There has been no concealment of the cost figures. The gross cost, including that of the current community enterprise programme, which will provide 130,000 jobs, will be £575 million in a full year. The on-cost of the new community programme will be an additional £185 million.
    Mr. Kenneth Carlisle: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many people are glad that the new programme is available throughout the country, as it recognises the needs of the long-term unemployed? Is it possible to incorporate some form of retraining for certain skills in that programme? We shall want people to be available for jobs at the end of the programme.
    Mr. Alison: When the programme was conceived it was thought that there should be a training element in it, if desired. The sum of £10 of the average of £60 a week per community programme trainee can be allocated to training. The whole of the £440 overhead annual costs per capita can also be allocated to training if desired.
    Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Is it correct that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer promised £150 million net expenditure for the programme the Manpower Services Commission proposed a scheme under which there could be another 100,000 full-time jobs at a wage of £90 a week, but that was rejected because the Secretary of State for Employment and the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted to cut wages for people on the scheme and the average is now £60 for part-time employment?
    Mr. Alison: No, Sir. We have not cut the rate for the job, which remains the basic criterion. By averaging the funds available we have introduced the concept of part-time work. Some people will draw less than £60 a week, but many will draw the full average sum of £85 or £90 a week.
    Mr. Adley: Does my right hon. Friend accept that many preserved railways present good opportunities for employment and training, particularly for young people, in many skills connected with engineering? Will he make a direct approach to the Association of Railway Preservation Societies to see how the community programme can best be used both for the railways and the individuals concerned?
    Mr. Alison: As a fellow railway enthusiast, I assure my hon. Friend that I intend to keep an eye on that. I hope to visit the Didcot railway preservation centre in connection with the scheme before long.

    Leeds
    Mr. Joseph Deanasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will set out in the Official Report the unemployment statistics for the Leeds travel-to-work area for the past five years; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Waddington: In accordance with the hon. Member's request, the figures will be published in the Official Report.
    In October 1982 the number of unemployed claimants in the Leeds travel-to-work area—from now on the count is based on claimants—was 41,381.
    Mr. Dean: Is the Minister aware that the Leeds travel-to-work area has a history of reasonable wage levels and good industrial relations, but that the figures show that unemployment in that area has more than doubled during the Government's period of office, although there are many industries there, because Leeds is not a single industry city? Will the Minister ask the Secretary of State for Industry to restore to Leeds the assisted area status that was stupidly removed in August this year?
    Mr. Waddington: I shall see that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is made aware of what the hon. Gentleman has said. I stress that the Government's task is to create the right environment in which firms can prosper. I remember that in April 1981, in an Adjournment debate, the hon. Gentleman complained of high interest rates. I am sure that he will wish to congratulate the Government on what has been achieved since then.
    Mr. Woolmer: Is the Minister aware that in recent months Morley and other towns on the edge of Leeds have been experiencing an increase in unemployment, not a fall or stabilisation, as Ministers continue to claim? Unemployment has more than trebled under the Government. Is the Minister further aware that that is a direct result of the devastation wreaked on our manufacturing industry by the economics of despair which the Minister and Treasury Ministers continue to inflict on this country?
    Mr. Waddington: I do not agree with that proposition. I know of the hon. Gentleman's interest in the textile industry. He will be aware, as I am, of the traumas suffered by the textile industry because of imports. He knows as well as I do that we are a major trading nation,

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    exporting one-third of our manufactured output, and that it would be dangerous for us to indulge in a protectionist war.
    Following are the details:

    Numbers registered as unemployed in the Leeds travel-to-work area at October in each of the past five years were

    Year

    Number

    1978

    18,034

    1979

    17,802

    1980

    28,628

    1981

    39,456

    1982

    45,101

    Fair Wages
    Mr. Hooleyasked the Secretary of State for Employment what derogation has been made by the United Kingdom from International Labour Organisation convention 94 relating to fair wages.
    Mr. Cryerasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the Government's proposals regarding the fair wages resolution.
    Mr. Tebbit: The United Kingdom Government have denounced International Labour convention No. 94. The denunciation was registered by the International Labour Office on 20 September 1982 and will take effect on 20 September 1983. The House will be invited during the current Session to approve a motion proposing the rescission of the fair wages resolution.
    Mr. Hooley: Is the Secretary of State for unemployment aware that working people will draw the conclusion from that statement that the Government are hell-bent on destroying not only their jobs but their standard of living and are forcing down the wages of those who are still employed?
    Mr. Tebbit: No, Sir. None of the hon. Gentleman's propositions have a vestige of truth in them.
    Mr. Cryer: Is the Secretary of State not concerned about people having fair wages? Is he not worried about the possibility of contractors and subcontractors paying less than fair wages? If he is concerned about fair wages, why did he not allow views to be expressed on the fair wages resolution, instead of registering a denunciation when Parliament was not sitting, thereby avoiding any vestige of parliamentary scrutiny at the time of the denunciation?
    Mr. Tebbit: The hon. Gentleman must have misheard the information that there will shortly be a debate on this matter, and I look forward to it. I am interested to note that the hon. Gentleman has adopted the concept of a fair wage, which I presume makes him a supporter of some form of incomes policy and of wage fixing outside industrial bargaining.
    Mr. Viggers: What is fair about wages that price people out of jobs?
    Mr. Tebbit: That is the point, and that is one of the reasons why the Government have decided to take this step. As my hon. Friend knows, there is an undertaking on the part of the Government that if a sufficient number of people in industry behave like lemmings and price
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    themselves out of work, we are bound to make sure that we prevent other people from pricing themselves into work. That is crazy.
    Mr. Race: How many countries, having ratified ILO convention 94, have now denounced it? Is it true that the United Kingdom is the only country to have done so? Will the Minister take advice from a former Conservative Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Macmillan, which is set out in Hansard in 1946, when the fair wages resolution was passed? Mr. Macmillan denounced the actions of a future Right-wing Government that might wish to remove the resolution.
    Mr. Tebbit: Even the hon. Gentleman will accept that there have been changes in the world since 1946. Although the United Kingdom, having accepted the convention, is the first country to denounce it, among the countries which have always had more sense than to become involved in accepting the convention are the United States of America, West Germany and Japan, our competitors, and Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Other European countries, such as Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Portugal, Greece and Luxembourg and—this will please the hon. Gentleman—all the Eastern bloc countries have never complied with the convention.
    Mr. John Townend: Will this derogation enable the Government to abolish the wages councils?
    Mr. Tebbit: No. I am afraid that that is another convention.
    Mr. Harold Walker: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that for nearly 100 years the House has unanimously affirmed its belief that British Governments should set an example as good employers? Is this what he is now retreating from? Is the Secretary of State aware that the way in which he is proceeding in this matter is scandalous and may be unconstitutional, because, without consultation with anyone, and without listening to the views of the House, he has unilaterally renounced the ILO convention, which is based on our record of setting a good example in these matters? Is he further aware that he has thrown this Parliament, Government and country into the gutter at the ILO?
    Mr. Tebbit: But for the conventions of the House, I should not bother to answer, because that question is a lot of nonsense. The Government are not retreating from their obligations; they are making sure that we do not prevent people from finding and doing jobs at prices that they think are reasonable.
    There is no substance in what the right hon. Gentleman said about the constitutional position. I have behaved in a proper manner. Having consulted, as was my duty, the TUC and the CBI, and considered what they said, I reached my conclusion on the renunciation. I hope that shortly the House will reach a conclusion on the matter.

    Unemployment Statistics (International Comparisons)
    Mr. Ralph Howellasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will compare the percentage of the work force who are unemployed in the United Kingdom with the figures for (a) Switzerland and (b) Jersey.
    Mr. Peter Morrison: The latest available unemployment rates, using figures on national definitions, are 13·1 per cent. in the United Kingdom, 0·5 per cent. in

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    Switzerland and 1·7 per cent. in Jersey. They are not directly comparable, because of differences in concepts, coverage and methods of compilation.
    Mr. Howell: Does my hon. Friend agree that these figures are not only enlightening, but disturbing, in view of our experience? Is he aware that the one thing that Switzerland and Jersey have in common is that people there have the right to work and the obligation to work, rather than rely on welfare benefits? Will he assure the House that a study will be made to find out whether we can benefit from their successful methods?
    Mr. Morrison: I agree with my hon. Friend that the level of unemployment benefit is bound to have a consequence for the willingness to search for a job. My hon. Friend has made invidious comparisions, and I agree with him, but he should know—as I am sure he does—that, compared with Canada, Germany, the United States of America, the Netherlands and Ireland, our increase in unemployment over the past 12 months has been substantially lower.
    Mr. Radice: Will the Minister confirm that since May 1979 United Kingdom unemployment has increased more rapidly than that of any of our main competitors?
    Mr. Morrison: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was listening to what I said. What he says may be the case, but I was speaking about the last 12 months.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my hon. Friend agree that in both Switzerland and Jersey people in public life recognise that banking and insurance are providers of jobs and creators of wealth? The massive investment in Perth by the General Accident Fire and Life Assurance Corporation of £30 million for a new headquarters has not been received well in some quarters. Is not that attitude the reason why this sector does better in Switzerland and Jersey than it does here?
    Mr. Morrison: I agree with my hon. Friend that jobs in the commercial sectors of banking and insurance are just as worth while as jobs in manufacturing industry.
    Mr. Straw: Does the Minister recognise that while the British unemployment rate throughout the period of the Labour Government was about the average of that of our major competitors, under this Government it has risen and made Britain the unemployment blackspot of the Western world? How does the Minister square that apalling record with the explicit avowal by the Prime Minister during the general election campaign that Tory policies would not lead to a rise in unemployment?
    Mr. Morrison: As the hon. Gentleman is aware, the Government have reaped the whirlwind of a high inflation rate, lack of competitiveness and overmanning. Had that not been the case, perhaps the level of unemployment would not now be where it is. It looks as though the Labour Party's proposals for the future would lead to the same again.

    Apprenticeships
    Mr. Wigleyasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will take steps to improve the opportunities for apprenticeships for young persons leaving schools.
    Mr. Peter Morrison: This year we are providing over £50 million to support training for first-year and redundant
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    apprentices, and from next September young people taken on as apprentices can come within the scope of our £1 billion new youth training scheme.
    Mr. Wigley: Does the Minister accept that, compared with 10 years ago, the situation is now serious? There are many companies, in both the private and the public sector, which a decade ago had dozens of apprentices but who now have none. So far this year progress has been minimal. What gives the Minister any hope that the new package in September will bring about a drastic change?
    Mr. Morrison: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the pattern of working life has changed radically over the past 10 years. I believe strongly, and I think it is agreed throughout the House, that the new youth training scheme is a basis on which we can build for the future.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: Will the Minister confirm that the number of apprenticeships has declined to 60 per cent. of the 1979 figure? Does he agree that so far there is no sign that young men and women can reach craft status through any of the short-term schemes that the Government have introduced, and this at a time when skill shortages are likely to be one of the main blocks to recovery, should it ever come?
    Mr. Morrison: As the right hon. Lady is aware, we have increased the number of first-year apprentices whom we are supporting from 20,000 in 1979 to 35,000 now, so we are taking account of her point. With regard to the future, the right hon. Lady will also be aware that one of the three proposals in the new training initiative is that we should completely reform the apprenticeship system. Perhaps we should be looking forwards, not backwards as she is suggesting.
    Sir Charles Fletcher-Cooke: On what date will the youth training scheme come into operation? Will my hon. Friend give an assurance that the scheme's products will be fully accepted into industry as apprentices?
    Mr. Morrison: My hon. and learned Friend will probably be aware that the date for the introduction of the new training scheme is September 1983. We hope that there will be integration between the apprenticeship system and the new youth training scheme.
    Mr. Barry Jones: Does the Minister not understand that plummeting overall apprenticeship totals are a chilling indicator of the rate of Britain's deindustrialisation?
    Mr. Morrison: The hon. Gentleman is surely aware that the Government have taken great steps and have put enormous, increased resources aside to deal with that problem.

    Hard Rock Mining
    Mr. Penhaligonasked the Secretary of State for employment what was the number employed in hard rock mining at the latest date and 10 years previously in Cornwall.
    Mr. Peter Morrison: The limited official information available shows that in June 1978, the latest available date, there were 1,300 employees in Cornwall in mining and quarrying, other than for coal, stone or slate. In June 1971 there were 1,200.
    Mr. Penhaligon: Will the Minister help this important part of the Cornish economy by investigating the

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    circumstances in which a small private company, Wheal Concorde, in my constituency was recently forced to lay off all its employees? Is he aware that the reason appears to be the sudden and arbitrary refusal by Rio Tinto Zinc to treat Wheal Concorde's ore, which is said to be worth about £400,000, thus destroying the company's cash flow, and perhaps the company at the same time?
    Mr. Morrison: The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I am not aware of the exact details. I suspect that this is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry, and I shall ensure that he is made aware of the hon. Gentleman's points.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: In so far as there is a direct connection between rock mining in Cornwall and slate mining in the Lakelands, might it not prove to be a good way of getting people back to work in areas of high unemployment if the Government were to invest in that industry and help with the pricing of its products on the market?
    Mr. Morrison: The hon. Gentleman would have a point if money could be made available, but not at taxpayers' expense.

    Secret Ballots
    Mr. Maclennanasked the Secretary of State for Employment when he intends to bring forward proposals on secret ballots for the election of trade union officials.
    Mr. Tebbit: I hope to issue a consultative document shortly.
    Mr. Maclennan: Why has the Secretary of State left a measure of trade union reform that should have appeared at the beginning of the Government's programme to the last year of their life? Is he saying that he has now been converted to the view that has been advanced by the Social Democrats and the Liberals that giving the trade unions back to their members would prove to be the most important reform of industial relations?
    Mr. Tebbit: No doubt the House will ask itself why the hon. Gentleman and all bar one of his colleagues in the Social Democratic Party consistently supported Governments who opposed every measure of trade union reform that was brought before the House. The House might be inclined to ask when the hon. Gentleman changed his mind. I have taken advice from several people on this issue, and particularly from the man who said:
    "For more years than I care to remember the extreme Left have been intriguing, lying and manipulating the votes of trade unions."
    That was Mr. Frank Chapple. It is time that we helped him.
    Mr. Prentice rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I had hoped to get the Front Benches in, but time will defeat us.
    Mr. Prentice: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many Conservative Members would have liked such a proposal to be included in the Gracious Speech? However, we may be prepared to wait a little longer if my right hon. Friend's ultimate proposals deal not only with the election of officials but with secret ballots prior to the calling of major strikes, because such proposals are long overdue.
    Mr. Tebbit: I must ask my right hon. Friend to await the Green Paper. However, it is greatly to his credit that
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    he stood for election on the programme of reform that was conducted by the previous Secretary of State for Employment, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, as it has been by me.
    Mr. Varley rose—
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Lady knows that if she gives notice that she intends to raise the matter on the Adjournment that will prevent other hon. Members from being called.
    Mrs. Williams: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Is there any way in which you can protect hon. Members from the expression of an inaccuracy by the Secretary of State?—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Inaccuracy is a way of life in the House.
    Mr. Varley: Is the Secretary of State aware that his decision to produce the Green Paper in the final Session of Parliament is no more than a squalid attempt to divert attention from the disastrous economic policies that the Government have followed? More evil men than the Secretary of State have been trying to destroy the trade union movement, but they will not succeed.
    Mr. Tebbit: I used to doubt those psychiatrists and sociologists who said that job insecurity made people aggressive, but I am beginning to change my mind. I ask myself why the right hon. Gentleman so consistently opposes programmes for democratisation of the trade unions. Is it because when the miners had their chance to speak they slapped the right hon. Gentleman in the face through their ballot?

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Greenwayasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 23 November.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having further meetings later today, including one with the Speaker of the Syrian People "s Assembly. This evening I hope to have an audience of Her Majesty the Queen.
    Mr. Greenway: May I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply and ask whether she agrees with the speech by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), in which he described the Labour Party's defence policy as a divisive and insular irrelevance? Has my right hon. Friend read the remarks of Mr. Andropov, who said that the Russians were not naive enough to disarm unilaterally? Does she agree that the Labour Party is very naive?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend and the speech that he quoted, in that the only way to peace is through agreement to disarm multilaterally. We shall then reduce nuclear weapons on all sides and maintain a balance at all times. I noticed the statement made in the Soviet Union, which was reported this morning and which I believe was mentioned on the radio, that no one should expect the Soviet Union to disarm unilaterally, and that
    "We are not naive people."

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    I hope that that lesson will not be lost on unilateralist Members of Parliament.
    Mr. Foot: Does the Prime Minister not accept that the most serious aspect of this recent issue is the statement yesterday by President Reagan on the proposed deployment of MX missiles? What consultations were there with the British Government before President Reagan made that statement, and what representations did the right hon. Lady make when the subject was raised? Does she not agree that President Reagan's proposal will involve a serious departure from the SALT II agreement?
    The Prime Minister: I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. The United States of America is perfectly entitled to take steps to modernise its own strategic nuclear force. That is what the announcement about the MX intercontinental ballistic missile was. I do not accept that it will necessarily undercut the SALT agreements. We must remember that President Reagan made proposals about disarmament and that we are waiting for a response from the Soviet Union.
    Mr. Foot: Will the right hon. Lady say what use there is in talking about new arms control arrangements if some of the old arrangements have been torn up? Is it not a fact that President Reagan's proposals, if carried out, would involve a grave breach of SALT II and that it would involve a departure from article 4 of that treaty? Has the right hon. Lady made any representations to the United States on this matter, or does she not care whether the nuclear arms race goes ahead at a much faster speed?
    The Prime Minister: I care that we have sufficient to deter an aggressor. That means keeping the United States strategic nuclear force modernised. It means having a reply to intercontinental ballistic missiles, and it means having regard to the level of our conventional Armed Forces. The Americans have said that their basing plan for MX missiles does not undercut the SALT agreements in any respect.
    Mr. Foot: This is the most serious matter in the world. We want to know what representations the British Government have made on this matter—or did we just say to President Reagan "You can go ahead, irrespective of whether it injures SALT II"? If the right hon. Lady consults article 4 of SALT II, she will see that this is a breach of that article. I want to know what attitude the British Government took when the proposal was made.
    The Prime Minister: It is not for us to tell the United States what to do about its strategic nuclear force. It is for us to recognise that its strategic nuclear force is the final guarantor of Europe's liberty. I have told the right hon. Gentleman that the Americans have said that their basing plan for MX missiles does not undercut the SALT agreements in any respect. We believe that we should negotiate from strength. The right hon. Gentleman would negotiate only from weakness, and he would have no hope of coming to a reasonable settlement.
    Mr. Eggar: In view of Mr. Andropov's statement, are we not fortunate that the Labour Party spent so much money on Chevaline when it was in office?
    The Prime Minister: That is a fact which some Labour Members conveniently like to forget.
    Mr. Roy Jenkins: There are other serious matters relating to the state of the economy. Will the right hon.
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    Lady explain why relations between the Government and British industry are now worse than at almost any time, except for a brief period when the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) sought to tell industry how to do its job?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman at that time was supporting the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). I also point out that the premise of his question is wrong. Relations between British industry and the Government are not bad. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman will have noticed some of the votes at the CBI conference which supported our policy.
    Mr. Ray Powellasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply which I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Powell: Will the Prime Minister say whether Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins are correct in stating in their book on the Falklands that she despatched three submarines to the South Atlantic on 29 March?
    The Prime Minister: I am sorry, but I did not hear the whole of the hon. Gentleman's question. I have no idea about those two books. I have not read them, because I have been too busy doing other things.
    Mr. Churchill: As the United States has not added to its strategic nuclear inventory of missiles since 1967, when it became static at 1,710 missiles, and as during the same period the Soviet Union has been deploying intercontinental ballistic missiles at the rate of 100 a year, is it not humbug and hypocrisy for the Leader of the Opposition to make such a song and dance about the fact that the United States is now belatedly taking steps to modernise its own capability, which is substantially below the SALT II limit?
    The Prime Minister: Yes.
    Later—
    Mr. Ray Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the Prime Minister's unsatisfactory reply to my question, I beg to give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment as soon as possible.

    Falkland Islands
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Prime Minister if she will make a statement on discussions between Her Majesty's Government and the United States Government on policy towards the resolution agreed at the United Nations on 4 November in relation to the Falkland Islands.
    The Prime Minister: We were in frequent contact with the United States Government before the vote on 4 November, and they were left in no doubt about our views concerning this resolution.
    Mr. Dalyell: What hard evidence does the Prime Minister have for her statement that the American vote wes an aberration?
    The Prime Minister: We were very grateful for the support of the United States Government throughout the Falklands campaign. They have supported, and we expect them to continue to support, a country which is an ally and which stands for the same democratic principles and for self-determination. To depart from that, to support Argentina, would be an aberration.
    Sir John Biggs-Davison: Was it not indeed an aberration, and would not the United States be better employed in mobilising international support for the United Kingdom, as sovereign power, in islands that are vital to the strategy of the West, including the United States?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend.
    Mr. Tom Clarke: In view of the frequent comments about so-called social security scroungers—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. We are not on an open question now. We are dealing with the Falklands.
    Mr. Strang: As at least one newspaper which supported the Prime Minister's Falklands campaign blurted out the truth, namely, that negotiations on the basis of the resolution should take place as soon as the election is over, even if we have a Conservative Government, is the Prime Minister aware that it is bad enough for her to spend £400 million a year on the garrison in the Falklands, but that it would be intolerable if she sacrificed the lives of more Service men in defence of this relic of our imperial past?
    The Prime Minister: There can be no question of negotiations on sovereignty for the Falkland Islands. It would be a betrayal of those who fought and died.

    Engagements
    Sir Anthony Meyerasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave some moments ago.
    Sir Anthony Meyer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is an unfilled vacancy, and that is the leadership of the free world at a particularly perilous moment? Is she further aware that, as the senior leader in the West—[Interruption]—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The House does itself no good by all this noise. If we get into the habit of trying to shout down what we do not like, democracy will come to an end here.
    Sir Anthony Meyer: —she is uniquely qualified to fill that post if she can demonstrate the same intensity of concern for the well-being of the peoples of the European Community and the Atlantic alliance as she has convincingly demonstrated for the well-being of the people of this country?
    The Prime Minister: I realise what my hon. Friend is saying, but anyone who attempted to self-style himself as the leader of either the free world or the European Community would not get far or have much influence. In
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    the European Community we are a partnership of 10 sovereign nations, each representing its own interests, but realising that it is better for all and each of us to do certain things in common. We shall continue to represent British interests, and we shall continue to try to seek equitable policies for the Community as a whole. That is the best leadership that we can give.
    Mr. Tom Clarke: In view of the frequent references to so-called social security exploiters, is it not outrageous that millions of pounds are lost to Britain because of tax evasion? Will the Prime Minister respond to the Civil Service trade unions by making personnel available for the collection of such vital revenue and in so doing respond to the views of the Public Accounts Committee?
    The Prime Minister: If there is fraud of any kind, either in connection with social security or tax, there are people allocated to root it out, after which it becomes a matter for the police. There are such people in the Department of Health and Social Security and in the back tax department of the Inland Revenue.
    Mr. Dickens: For the sake of the strength of the £ sterling, will my right hon. Friend please confirm to the House that the Government intend to stand steadfast behind their economic policies and that we have merely requested local government to spend up to its controlled agreed quotas?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right. No one in the market should have any doubt about our determination to hold fast to our strategy to beat inflation. Sound money remains at the heart of our economic policies.
    We have asked local authorities to spend up to and not beyond their allocations. Indeed, it is our policy to keep all public expenditure within the cash limits that have been set.
    Mr. Michael Latham: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I raise again a matter which I raised with you a couple of weeks ago? There is an increasing tendency among hon. Members—today it was a right hon. Member—to raise points of order in the middle of Question Time, which takes away the rights of other Back-Bench Members.
    Mr. Speaker: I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman. The House knows that I have asked right hon. and hon. Members to wait until after Question Time to raise points of order. I shall do my best to ensure that that happens in future.
    Sir John Biggs-Davison: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Was it not the case that the right hon. Member desired protection, and does not the House need protection from spurious points of order?

Local Authority Expenditure (Wales)
3.32 pm
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Nicholas Edwards): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a statement about public expenditure provision for housing and other local authority capital spending in Wales.
First, I want to say something about the current year, 1982–83. Monitoring of capital payments by local authorities in Wales at the end of the first half year showed that there was likely to be a substantial underspend of the cash limit. The main reason for that is that housing authorities are not using their capital receipts for new capital work. To reduce the expected underspend, housing authorities have been told that they may increase their spending on house renovation in the current year without limit.
I have also reviewed the position of other local authorities, and where they appeared to be spending up to their previously expected pattern they have been offered additional capital allocations for work in the current year. Furthermore, some urban programme schemes for which provision was not originally available have now been approved and consequent additional allocations made. Altogether those additional allocations total £3·58 million.
I now turn to the provision for 1983–84. I have not yet completed consideration of the allocation of resources to particular services within my public expenditure block. However, I can now say something about the resources to be assigned to housing and other local authority capital expenditure.
In forming my conclusions I have taken account of the estimated level of local authority capital receipts in 1983–84. Hon. Members will know that as a general rule local authorities can spend their capital receipts on new capital projects, in addition to the capital allocations I make. The exception is housing, where I have previously required that only half of the housing receipts should be freely available for any capital spending, the other half being built into the housing allocation.
Local authority capital receipts in Wales next year are forecast to be £90 million, of which £85 million is forecast to be housing receipts. As I have said, housing authorities have not been using their capital receipts for new capital spending. With the object of achieving a larger capital spend, I have decided to reduce the proportion of unallocated housing receipts to 25 per cent. The remaining 75 per cent. will be built in to the allocations. I shall be laying before the House accordingly regulations under section 72 of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980.
After consultation with the Welsh local authorities, I have today made rent and maintenance determinations for 1983–84. I have determined the increase in the local contribution for rent at 85p, and the increase in maintenance and management expenditure at 7 per cent. On the basis of those determinations the amount available for spending on housing by local authorities and the Housing Corporation in Wales next year will be £202·3 million. If local authorities underspend by £80 million this year—the figure referred to in a parliamentary answer by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Wales yesterday—that will represent an increase of over 75 per cent. On the most optimistic assumption that I have seen for this year's expenditure, which is about £169 million,
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there will be an increase of 20 per cent. Together with the change in the treatment of capital receipts which I have outlined, this will enable me to allocate £139 million to local authorities in respect of housing. That is an increase of 13 per cent. on the current year's allocation. The allocation to the Housing Corporation will be maintained in real terms.
For other services I have decided to allocate the following amounts—education, £34·325 million; transport, £60·068 million; personal social services, £6·641 million; and for all other services, £42·163 million.
Together with the allocation for housing, that makes a total provision for local authority capital expenditure of just over £282 million, excluding the urban programme to which I shall refer later. In addition, there will be the £41·3 million I intend to allocate to the Housing Corporation.
At the local authority level, an authority receives its allocation as a block and can spend it on whatever capital projects it wishes. I shall circulate in the Official Report a table showing the allocations to individual authorities. Each local authoritiy will receive a formal notification of its allocation.
There is one more thing I wish to say about housing. In the particular circumstances of the Welsh housing stock, I attach the greatest importance to renovation grants. I have already announced the continuation of higher rates of grant until the end of 1983–84 and I am anxious to assist local authorities in meeting the resulting demand. Therefore, I have decided that, if a local authority's expenditure on renovation grants exceeds a specified level in 1983–84, I shall make an additional allocation to cover the excess. The Welsh Office will be writing to housing authorities about this in a few days' time.
I also want to tell the House about my intention as regards the urban programme and urban development grants. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment told the House of the importance we attach to the new urban development grant scheme. The response in Wales has been encouraging and we are considering the imaginative schemes which have been submitted. For the moment I have allocated £21 million to UDGs and the traditional urban programme together. I shall decide how much to devote to UDGs and on the allocation of the remainder to local authority schemes under the traditional programme once our consideration is complete.
The allocations that I have announced will enable local authorities in Wales to undertake a substantial programme of capital work next year. On the most optimisitc assumption about this year's spend, there will be an increase of about £50 million and on pessimistic assumptions a good deal more. That presents them with an opportunity to improve the infrastructure of the community and to tackle some of the problems which we all recognise.
Those authorites with enterprise zones in their areas are presented with particular opportunities—Swansea, where such a good start has been made, and the new zone at Flint which I announced on 15 November. As I said then, I am giving further consideration to the establishment of a third. Throughout Wales, the local communities will benefit, the construction industry will be assisted, and new jobs will be created provided that local authorities take full advantage of the capital allocations I make and use to the full the capital receipts that come in.
Mr. Alec Jones: I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has made his statement to the House, although I must confess that even with the aid of a calculator I need more than half an hour to understand its contents. I welcome the statement if it means a real increase in capital spending in Wales both from the point of view of local government services and much needed jobs.
The Secretary of State proposes in the current year to try to encourage increased spending on house renovation and a certain hoped-for increase in capital allocations. It is probably far too late in the year to do much about underspend during the current year. Therefore, his statement is right in that it concentrates mostly on the coming year 1983–84.
I can understand the natural desire of the Secretary of State to improve his housing achievements in Wales, since the present Government have probably the worst record on house building in Wales of any Government since the war. Anything that can be done to improve that is to be welcomed.
The Secretary of State, in an effort to use more receipts from the sale of council houses for new building, is reducing the proportion of unallocated housing receipts to 25 per cent. and building the remaining 75 per cent. into local authority allocations. Is this not a further intrusion into the freedom which he previously boasted he was anxious to give to local authorities? Will he consider using the rate support grant settlement to compensate local authorities for the interest on capital receipts that he is now asking them to forgo by using the receipts from sales of council houses for new building? Of the total increased level of expenditure announced, how much is from the sale of council houses and the sale of other assets, and how much, if any, new money are the Government putting into local government?
The Secretary of State announced rent increases next year of 85p and a 7 per cent. increase in maintenance and management. Is it necessary for all local authorities to raise rents by that amount? How many local authorities in Wales, for instance, are now in surplus on their housing revenue accounts, and, if they are in surplus, what is the justification for this further increase?
The Secretary of State has allocated £6·641 million for personal social services. Does that item include any transfer of funds from the National Health Service to cover any increase in jointly funded schemes?
I note that the Housing Corporation allocation is only to be maintained in real terms. Does that mean that the Secretary of State does not realise that housing associations can play an increased role in dealing with housing needs in Wales? The Secretary of State has given us some details of the increases in expenditure on housing. What are the percentage increases in real terms on education, transport and personal social services?
If local authorities incur current expenditure and loan charges as a consequence of the capital expenditure on which the right hon. Gentleman is encouraging them to embark today, will he give an assurance that if such increased current expenditure takes them over their expenditure targets for next year they will not have their rate support grant reduced?
Finally, I should like to say to the right hon. Gentleman that I certainly prefer him in his new role as a spendthrift from Pembrokeshire.
Mr. Edwards: I recognise the complexity of the statement and the right hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Jones) has raised many points on it.
In response to the right hon. Gentleman's final point, I emphasise that all we are seeking to do is to encourage local government to spend up to the cash limits previously announced. No change in the Government's economic strategy is implied in that.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the overall increase in allocations. Including the urban programme, the increase amounts to 8 per cent. and is regardless of the actual spend on capital receipts.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to housing renovations and suggested that it was perhaps too late to achieve much increased expenditure in the current year. In 1981–82 the local authorities spent only a little more than £16 million on renovation grants. It is estimated that this year they will spend about £45 million, and next year we expect them to spend at least £70 million. The total expenditure on renovation grants during the period of office of the previous Labour Government was not more than about £57 million, so that is a very sharp upturn indeed.
I do not agree that it is too late to do much about underspend during the current year. I had an example drawn to my attention only in the past 24 hours. In Rhymney, the local authority is currently refusing to give improvement grants, despite the fact that we have given assurances to the local authority about the matter. It is holding off until it has the full allocation for next year, although it seems clear that it will have an underspend—indeed, its current level of spending is much less that some of its neighbours which are still allocating grants. There are plenty of other local authorities in the same position.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about our record on housing. Local authorities—most of them are dominated by the Labour Party—are estimated to be underspending in the current year up to £80 million of the money available for housing. If the right hon. Gentleman really feels that there is a housing need—I agree with him—I hope that he will encourage local authorities throughout Wales to spend the money that the Government have made available.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the proportions of unallocated receipts and about the formal amounts allocated. In the current year, we originally estimated that receipts for local authorities sales would amount to £58 million. Our latest estimate is £97 million, and for next year we are currently estimating £85 million.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the scale of the housing work and the effect that it might have on current expenditure and on interest charges. I make no apology for saying that, in the light of the known housing need in Wales, local authorities should spend the money on this priority, and I do not believe that there is any justification in their present expenditure to exceed targets as a result.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the rent increase next year of 85p. He will be aware that the Labour Government took the view that rent levels should rise in line with increases in inflation but never did anything about it. This increase is broadly in line with inflation and, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, we are increasing the local contribution which effects, of course, the local authority grant position, but local authorities are free to make individual decisions on rents in their own areas.

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The right hon. Gentleman referred to personal social services and to other matters. I said in my statement that there is a block allocation to each local authority and that the local authority, within that total, and subject to the limitation that I have introduced about housing receipts, is free to spend the money in the ways that it thinks best. I have no immediate control over the way it does it.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about jointly funded schemes. I shall elaborate on that subject in the Welsh Grand Committee tomorrow.
I hope that I have dealt with most of the right hon. Gentleman's detailed points.
Sir Anthony Meyer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there will be a warm welcome in Wales for what he has announced and that hope will be rekindled in many quarters? Does he recognise that the capital works schemes on which he has placed so much emphasis are certainly the best way of creating employment without producing too many inflationary pressures? Will he ensure that his fairly complex arrangements are fully and clearly explained to local authorities so that there is no misunderstanding on their part about exactly how much they have available to spend and on what? In the past, there has undoubtedly been misunderstanding about the moneys available from the sale of council housing. This misunderstanding has had adverse effects on some authorities, especially Rhuddlan borough council.
Mr. Edwards: I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. The simplest form of clarification is that on the first half-yearly figures we could be faced with a capital underspend in Wales of £93 million, including the £80 million in respect of housing to which I have referred. On the most optimistic estimate, we could be faced with a total underspend of about £69 million. These figures show that there is a great deal of capital available within existing cash limits and within the Government's overall strategy to provide for the need that everyone acknowledges and to give a real boost to the construction industry. It is now up to local government to do its job.
Mr. James Callaghan: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the large increase in the number of people on the Cardiff housing waiting list? Is there any prospect that the increases that he has announced today will reduce waiting lists to the levels at which they stood when he began his stewardship?
Mr. Edwards: If the Cardiff authority was as energetic in its disposal of housing stock as other authorities, it would be able to provide a great deal of new housing for the right hon. Gentleman's constituents.
Mr. John Morris: Does the right hon. Gentleman not feel occasionally like the Grand Old Duke of York in that, having marched his bewildered local authority troops up the hill, he is now marching them down again? Will he make a statement comparable with that made by the Secretary of State for the Environment at the Tory Party conference, when he responded to the great anger about the proposals on the size of lorries by promising 55 new bypasses in England? Will there be comparable provision or a comparable promise for Wales?
Mr. Edwards: We are dealing with a statement on housing and local authority capital expenditure. I shall be
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announcing a substantial road programme on another occasion. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has talked about the Grand Old Duke of York, but I recall that when he was the Secretary of State for Wales he, too, was faced with an underspend. I am merely repeating the actions that he took when he had the same experience. He, too, had difficulty in getting local authorities to spend the money that the Government had made available to them.
Mr. Ian Grist: Is my right hon. Friend aware that last Saturday a married couple visited my surgery to tell me that they had applied 18 months ago to buy their flat in Cardiff from the council and that they had not received any offer, visit or notification? This waste of potential money for the Cardiff council is delaying the necessary programme of renovation of the housing stock, most of which was erected 70, 80 or 90 years ago and is in bad need of renovation. The programme that my right hon. Friend has announced will be extremely welcome to the people of Cardiff and by most of those living in the valleys of South Wales.
Mr. Edwards: The situation that my hon. Friend described is indefensible. It is penalising those who wish to buy their flats or houses and those who could have new authority housing built for them, or their existing housing improved, if the local authority got on with its job and spent the money that could be available to them.
Mr. Geraint Howells: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making a statement so early in the new Session. Will he give an assurance that the £3·58 million that he has allocated for urban programme schemes will not be clawed back from rural programme schemes? Will he give a further breakdown of the £42·163 million that is to be provided for all other services?
Mr. Edwards: I cannot give the breakdown that the hon. Gentleman requests. I allocate a total block to the local authorities. The Government merely indicate the way in which the block has been made up. It is for individual authorities to decide how much they spend on certain items.
The hon. Gentleman may have misunderstood the urban programme. This year I allocated originally £15·3 million to the programme. Additional amounts were made available during the year and the total was increased to £16·.8 million. I have now allocated slightly more than £21 million to the urban programme and the UDG schemes combined. I have not yet decided the make-up of that sum. I have to consider the 50 or more UDG schemes that have been submitted by local authorities. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that if we get investment in UDG schemes we multiply the scale of the capital investment. We may get a multiplier effect of four by getting private sector investment in addition to the public sector contribution.
Mr. Dafydd Wigley: Will it be possible in future, bearing in mind the complex nature of the statement, to publish a statement and to follow it up shortly afterwards with a debate in the Welsh Grand Committee so that we can go into some aspects in greater depth?
The right hon. Gentleman has talked about proven housing need. Was there not that need three years ago when the Government chopped the housing allocation in Wales by 48 per cent? Surely it is extremely difficult for local authorities to deal with changing programmes. Their staffing is geared up to meet a programme, there is a strong

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surge forward in an election year and then there is a programme of cuts immediately afterwards. Can we not achieve some stability in the housing programme in Wales?
Mr. Edwards: If I had presented the House with a written statement and announced a subsequent debate, the hon. Gentleman would have been one of the first to criticise me for not making an oral statement.
We are not dealing with a new development. We announced our intentions in respect of the availability of capital receipts when we started disposing of local authority housing under new legislation. Much earlier in the year we gave assurances and guarantees to local government which should have enabled them to go ahead and plan into next year on the basis of stability. We are now giving them a further assurance that they are not dealing with a one-year programme. There is no excuse for the current massive underspend of local government when it is the first to say that there is considerable housing need.
Mr. Roy Hughes: When the right hon. Gentleman replied to the questions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Jones) he said that the recently announced rent increases for council tenants were reasonable. Has he considered the tremendous unemployment in Wales, let alone short-time working, and the effect that it is having on rent arrears? What is he doing to help Welsh authorities? The Newport authority is facing much trouble because of these difficulties.
Mr. Edwards: Bearing in mind the emphasis on capital need and the state of the housing stock in Wales, it is not unreasonable to ask local authorities to increase rents broadly in line with the increase in costs. We shall be increasing maintenance and management expenditure by 7 per cent., which on the current inflation forecast means that there will be an additional margin for local authorities that will allow them to catch up with an admitted backlog of maintenance work.
Mr. Tom Ellis: To what extent would the insistence of a local authority, such as that of the Wrexham Maelor borough council, on having complete management control of an enterprise zone in its area influence the right hon. Gentleman in deciding whether to allocate a zone to such an authority?
Mr. Edwards: I have to bear in mind a number of factors in determining the siting of an enterprise zone, not least its potential success and the effect on other developments in the area. The hon. Gentleman will recognise that to place an enterprise zone immediately adjacent to a large industrially developed site, for example, could have an impact on that site. That is one consideration that has to be taken into account. We are having further discussions with local authorities that have applied for enterprise zones before ascertaining which we should select as the third site in Wales.
Mr. Ioan Evans: Does the Secretary of State realise that his announcement will be considered cynically by Welsh local authorities? Since he became Secretary of State he has told local authorities to cut, cut, cut. Now, in the run-up to an election, he is telling them to spend, spend, spend. What effect will that have on Wales, if there is current expenditure as well as capital expenditure, and how will it benefit total public expenditure? He mentioned the local authority part. Will
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the Secretary of State now divert resources from the Health Service or from other sectors or will there be an all-round increase in Wales?
Mr. Edwards: The hon. Gentleman will get in part an answer to the latter point in the Welsh Grand Committee tomorrow when we shall debate health matters.
I am not changing Government policy suddenly and asking for expenditure of money not previously available. I am merely emphasising the point that local authorities are not spending the money that has always been available to them. That does not represent a similar "spend, spend, spend" policy before a general election to that initiated by the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. Rowlands) before he had to change direction when the International Monetary Fund moved in. We are asking local authorities to spend the money that has always been available and that they have not spent up to now.
Mr. Donald Anderson: Although I welcome the new priority given to housing, will the Secretary of State confirm that the total sums available to Welsh housing authorities in the financial year 1983–84 are no higher than those available in 1979–80, the last year of the Labour Government, and that he has presided over the greatest slump in house building in Wales since the Second World War, with only 1,000 starts in the public sector in 1981–82?
On a technical point, local authorities are allowed to top up their allocations by the totality of capital receipts available to them—with the exception of housing which is only 50 per cent.—but the Secretary of State announced recently that the top-up will be reduced to 50 per cent. in other sectors. Is not that change inconsistent with today's statement, and will the Secretary of State withdraw the reduction from 100 per cent. to 50 per cent?
Mr. Edwards: A shortfall in the housing programme must be entirely the responsibility of the local authorities, mostly Labour-controlled, which have not spent the money made available to them by the Government. If the hon. Gentleman re-reads my admittedly complicated statement, he will see that the allocation of capital receipts has been made perfectly clear.
Following is the table:

Capital Expenditure Allocation 1983–84

L.A. Code

£000's

Counties:

Clwyd

38

11,785

Dyfed

39

10,905

Gwent

40

24,234

Gwynedd

41

7,015

Mid-Glamorgan

42

16,919

Powys

43

4,626

South Glamorgan

44

18,821

West Glamorgan

45

11,949

Total Counties

47

106,254

Districts:

Alyn and Deeside

01

3,254

Colwyn

02

3,077

Delyn

03

3,211

Glyndwr

04

1,987

Rhudllan

05

2,597

Wrexham Maelor

06

4,620

Carmarthen

07

4,293

Ceredigion

08

3,730

Dinefwr

09

1,619

Llanelli

10

4,318

Preseli

11

2,706

South Pembroke

12

2,668

715

L.A. Code

£000's

Blaenau Gwent

13

7,930

Islwyn

14

5,254

Monmouth

15

3,493

Newport

16

8,791

Torfaen

17

4,991

Aberconwy

18

2,390

Arfon

19

3,530

Dwyfor

20

1,360

Meirionnydd

21

3,170

Ynys Mon

22

3,799

Cynon Valley

23

3,989

Merthyr Tydfil

24

4,314

Ogwr

25

7,151

Rhondda

26

6,949

Rhymney Valley

27

6,118

Taff-Ely

28

7,103

Brecknock

29

1,796

Montgomery

30

1,907

Radnor

31

1,385

Cardiff

32

20,376

Vale of Glamorgan

33

5,569

Afan

34

2,409

Lliw Valley

35

4,402

Neath

36

2,999

Swansea

37

16,658

Total Districts

46

175,943

Total Wales

48

282,197

Mr. Harry Ewing: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise for not giving you notice of this point of order, but as I was involved with the steel lobby I could not do so. I resisted the temptation to raise a point of order following the statement last week by the Secretary of State for the Environment, because I was not sure what the Welsh Office intended to do. We had a statement from the Secretary of State for the Environment on his local authority spending programmes and we have today had a statement from the Secretary of State for Wales on his local authority spending programmes. However, the matter was dealt with by the most junior Minister at the Scottish Office at a press conference some days ago.
The Secretary of State for Scotland is deliberately avoiding his responsibilities to the House and in the process, and most importantly, he is denying Scottish Members of Parliament the opportunity, as was given to Welsh and English hon. Members, to ask questions on a statement. I hope, Mr. Speaker, that you will see that as a serious restriction on the ability of Members of Parliament from Scottish constituencies to carry out their parliamentary duties. If you see it in that way, Mr. Speaker, I hope that in your capacity as Speaker you will make representations to the appropriate quarter in the Government to ensure that the Secretary of State for Scotland has the courage to make a statement on the Floor of the House.
Mr. Speaker: I allowed the hon. Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth (Mr. Ewing) to make his point of order at length, but he will realise that the matter is one for the usual channels and not for me.

Local Authority Expenditure (Wales)

  CONWY TUNNEL (SUPPLEMENTARY POWERS) BILL
  Ordered,
  That the Conwy Tunnel (Supplementary Powers) Bill be referred to the Welsh Grand Committee.—[Mr. Nicholas Edwards.]

Orders of the Day

  Housing and Building Control Bill
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Mr. Speaker: I have not selected the Instruction.
  4.5 pm
  The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Heseltine): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  When I moved the Second Reading of the Housing Bill in January 1980, I explained that it had two main objectives. The first was to give people an opportunity to fulfil their aspirations to own their own homes and the second was to reverse the trend of ever-increasing dominance of the State over the life of the individual. Those objectives infuse our housing policy. This Bill is a further stage in meeting both objectives.
  Our housing policy has evolved against the background of economic stringency. After three years of financial discipline we are beginning to see the benefits. We have started to redress the imbalance between current and capital expenditure. Last week I announced to the House increases in some capital programmes, especially in housing. I have requested local authorities to increase their capital programmes for the current year to spend closer to the national provision. Authorities that need them have been offered extra capital allocations. All authorities can spend without limit on home improvement grants this year. I have agreed an increase of £150 million on the Housing Corporation's cash limit for the current year. For next year, 1983–84, the gross capital provision for housing will be increased. The provision will be some £340 million above the expected outturn for the current year, taking account of extra spend from last week's statement.
  Housing starts are now showing clear signs of improvement. In the public sector starts in the third quarter of 1982 are 36 per cent. up on the equivalent period a year ago. By September, public sector starts this year had already exceeded the total for the whole of 1981. A similar picture emerges in the private sector. Starts in the third quarter are 23 per cent. up on last year.
  In addition, there has been a revolution in the ways in which local authorities have started to make more effective use of the moneys available. They are now bringing in private finance through a range of joint initiatives and have been especially effective in opening new opportunities for home ownership in the low-cost sector of the market.
  There is now a wide variety of schemes, that widen choice and opportunity, especially for households on lower incomes. We have promoted shared ownership, buying part of a house and renting the rest with the option of outright purchase in due course. We have produced a model scheme and are preparing a model lease. The Bill that we are discussing today gives a right to a shared ownership lease to tenants who cannot afford to buy their homes outright at once. We have encouraged homesteading, giving the chance to buy rundown property at rock bottom prices to those willing to put major effort into improving their homes. Co-operation among house builders, local authorities and mortgage lenders has

  717
  produced sites for starter homes, often in the inner cities, and building for sale schemes under licence on local authority land.
  We have enabled local authorities and housing associations to buy, improve and sell properties in poor condition, producing exceptional housing value for a relatively small amount of public expenditure. In the Housing Act 1980 local authorities and the Housing Corporation were given a new power to guarantee building society mortgages to help those buying the cheapest older homes. In all these ways, as well as through council house sales, we have extended the opportunities open to thousands of families. This has been achieved through an extension of partnership between the public and private sectors.
  Many local authorities responded constructively. There is a new realisation that building more and more estates of housing for rent is not the answer for the 1980s and beyond. It is simply not what people want, it is not necessary and virtually everyone except the Opposition Front Bench now recognises that.
  Much of our effort has been directed at improving the quality of life on local authority estates. For those who wish to remain as tenants, we have enacted a charter giving formal security of tenure, a right to improve, a right to take in lodgers and sub-let, a right to be consulted about management changes and a right to information. With local authority co-operation, we have pioneered experiments such as the priority estates project and the community refurbishment schemes. A concentrated effort is being made to consult and involve the tenants, to make management local and accountable, to carry out the repairs and improvements that people actually want, to clear away rubbish and to improve physical security and policing. Too many tenants have been denied the freedoms that much of the rest of community takes for granted.
  At Cantril Farm in Knowsley we are proposing an even bolder experiment for a bleak and rundown estate of over 3,000 houses. It is proposed that the estate be taken over by a private trust involving the local authority, the tenants, the Abbey National building society and Barclays bank. Substantial amounts of private finance will be combined with public sector resources and devoted to the refurbishment of that estate. There would be a partnership between the Department, the local council, the Housing Corporation and the new trust. I am pleased to say that the tenants' first reaction has been enthusiastic. Full consultations are now in progress and work should begin early in the new year. Indeed, it is one of the curiosities of the political scene that in Liverpool the Labour Party is pressing the local authority to transfer its tenants in properties on the edge of Cantril Farm estate to the substantial experiment that I have described.
  A central objective remains to enable as many people as possible to become home owners. Since the Government took office tenants have fulfilled this ambition to a remarkable degree. More than 400,000 public sector dwellings have been bought by tenants since April 1979 and about 200,000 applications are in the pipeline. It must be realistic to say that about 1 million people are now living in homes that they have been able to buy only because of the Government's legislation.
  Four thousand tenants are completing the purchase of their homes every week under the right to buy. This is perhaps the most massive redistribution of wealth and property ownership by any standards that the working
  718
  people of this country have ever seen. I cannot recall any similar example of a Government transferring wealth back to the community on so wide a scale, and so often to families who previously had little or no prospect of ever owning their own homes.
  Mr. Reginald Freeson: In the light of the right hon. Gentleman's statement only a week ago will he confirm that between 30 per cent. and 40 per cent. of the 2 million people involved have bought their homes by voluntary negotiation rather than under the statutory rights provided by the Act to which he has referred?
  Mr. Heseltine: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, many Conservative-controlled local authorities have been selling their council houses for a significant period. It was only late in their period of office that the Labour Government sought to constrain local authorities' ability to do that. Nevertheless, under this Government the programme has been dramatically accelerated and we have fulfilled our obligations in the manifesto on which we were elected.
  Mr. Frank Allaun: The Secretary of State has referred to a great transfer of wealth to the ordinary people. Does he accept that that has been paid for by all the other council tenants, so there is no benefit to council tenants? The reason for the right hon. Gentleman's success is that he has forced councils to give a discount of 50 per cent. That is now being paid for by all the council tenants who cannot afford to buy their own homes.
  Mr. Heseltine: I know that the hon. Gentleman disapproves of the sale of council houses. No doubt the Labour Party will wish to make it clear in their next general election manifesto that under a Labour Government council tenants will lose the right to buy their homes. As a former shadow spokesman, my principal reason for seeking to persuade my party to adopt the terms that the hon. Gentleman now criticises was to recognise the fact that those who had bought freehold homes in postwar Britain had gained immeasurably from the inflationary pressures that existed in society. Discounts to council tenants were thus some compensation for the fact that they have lost so dramatically through remaining tenants.
  The figures are their own most eloquent testimony. In the first part of this year, applications under the right to buy were approaching a rate of 200,000 per annum. In Birmingham, between May, when a Conservative council took office, and the end of October, new right-to-buy applications have come in at a rate of more than 1,000 per month, taking the total from 5,000 to more than 12,000. It must now be beyond political question that the Labour Party's hostility to the enfranchisement of council tenants is one of the great political misjudgments of our time.
  The Bill furthers opportunities for home ownership. It also increases the role of the private sector in the sphere of building regulations.
  Mr. David Winnick: The right hon. Gentleman speaks of the right of tenants to buy their own homes. We shall argue about that again today, but the right hon. Gentleman would clearly have us believe that it is some kind of fundamental right. If that is so, why were private tenants excluded from the Act and from the Bill now before us? Why should they not have the same rights in law as the Government have conferred upon council tenants and now seek to give to tenants of housing associations?
  Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman knows the answer very well. As the Government are responsible for the disposition of the public sector, we were entitled to be elected on a manifesto stating that we would use some of those public resources in the way that we felt would benefit the tenants. It would have been quite wrong to suggest that we could deal with the private assets of individual citizens in the same way. However, if the Labour Party now intends to enable private tenants to acquire the privately owned property of other people, let us have that clearly on the record.
  Mr. Allan Roberts: Does the Secretary of State regard the housing association movement as part of the public sector? As Richard Best, director of the National Federation of Housing Associations, has said, in the past that movement has had charitable status and a great deal of charitable money has been poured into it. That makes it different from the public rented sector. Why, then, is the Secretary of State trying to force the housing associations to sell that property?
  Mr. Heseltine: If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I think that I can satisfy him about the proposals relating to housing associations. I shall explain precisely the distinctions that I regard as important. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but the Bill anticipates it and there are no grounds for further anxiety arising out of our proposals. Nevertheless, I shall return to that point in detail.
  As the House knows, some important groups of tenants have remained outside the right to buy and others within it have been unable to afford to buy outright. Part I of the Bill is aimed at them. It also makes a number of changes to the 1980 Act which will help to strengthen the position of tenants seeking to exercise their rights.
  Clause 1 extends the right to buy to tenants of local authorities, new towns and housing associations whose landlord does not own the freehold of their homes. Those tenants, providing they qualify in other respects, will be given the right to purchase a long lease of their homes, subject to the landlord's own outstanding interest being not less than 22 years in the case of houses and 50 years in the case of flats. Tenants living in houses, as opposed to flats, who purchase a long lease in that way will also be able to buy their freeholds subsequently if they qualify under the normal leasehold enfranchisement provisions of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967. It is because those provisions do not apply to fiats that we are providing for a 50-year minimum for flats so that tenants get a marketable asset. This clause gives effect to a long-standing Government commitment. There are perhaps 50,000 tenants who are currently outside the right to buy because their dwellings are leasehold property. There is no justification for their exclusion.
  It has been open to councils to sell such property on voluntary terms, but not all authorities have shown fairness in the treatment of tenants who wish to buy their homes. That is why we are legislating.
  The hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) has left the Chamber, but I am sure that he will have a chance to read Hansard. None of us doubts that inevitably he will be back, anyway until the next election.
  The main purpose of clause 2 is to confer the right to buy on tenants of charitable housing associations and trusts living in dwellings provided wholly or substantially with
  720
  public funds. Tenants of non-charitable associations, other than co-ownerships and associations which have not received Exchequer subsidy, already have the right to buy under the Housing Act 1980. This clause now extends the right to buy to tenants of charitable associations and trusts whose homes were provided with housing association grant.
  Charitable dwellings provided with the benefit of other forms of subsidy, which include all dwellings provided before the enactment of the Housing Act 1974, or with charitable funds, will not be affected, even if they have subsequently been improved or repaired with grant. Nor will dwellings built with grant on land provided by a charity attract the right to buy. That deals with the query of the hon. Member for Bootle.
  This clause extends the right to buy to about 80,000 tenants—about a quarter of the tenants of charitable associations in England and Wales. It is an extension of the right to buy to a group of tenants occupying dwellings which, having been provided with public money, are directly comparable with the housing stock of local authorities and non-charitable associations which is already subject to the right to buy.
  I have received a number of letters in the past year from tenants of charities who would dearly like to be able to own their own homes. They see the right to buy as the only opportunity that they are ever likely to get. Those whose homes were publicly funded believe it is unfair to be denied the right to buy. We are correcting that unfairness.
  The third major extension of the right to buy is the creation of a new right to shared ownership. That is dealt with in clauses 9 to 16 and schedule 5. Clause 9 provides that all tenants who have the right to buy, but whose mortgage entitlement does not enable them to buy, can opt instead for purchase on shared ownership terms. Shared ownership is a concept that is steadily gaining ground. Tenants will be given the opportunity to part-buy and part-rent their homes. They can buy the part they can afford and continue to rent the part that they cannot afford to buy.
  The Bill provides for an initial share of not less than 50 per cent., with the right to progress to full ownership at any time by buying additional shares in 12½ per cent. slices. The purchaser gets discount pro rata on his initial purchase, and again on his purchase of subsequent tranches. He continues to pay rent on the share of the dwelling which remains with the landlord—but with a reduction to take account of the fact that the shared owner is himself responsible for repairs from the time of the purchase of his initial share.
  That option will appeal to many thousands of tenants who cannot see their way to buying outright at once. It is important for tenants to get on to the first rung of the home ownership ladder from the start, but with the opportunity to ease into the full financial commitment over the years as resources allow.
  The Bill thus achieves three main extensions of the right to buy. Other provisions will assist those seeking to exercise their rights by removing uncertainties and anomalies and by dealing with obstacles that a minority of landlords have used to try to frustrate tenants' rights.
  New protection for tenants against unreasonable use of completion notices by landlords is given. Purchasers of houses who have to pay service charges are to be given the same rights of challenge as purchasers of flats already have under schedule 19 to the 1980 Act. That is needed as a few councils have imposed charges for so-called estate services

  721
  in a totally open-ended fashion, claiming payment for facilities such as meeting halls and laundries. We are also stopping the loophole whereby tenants are deprived of their right to buy by being required to exchange tenancies by mutual assignment. These provisions are evidence of our determination to deliver to tenants the rights granted them by Parliament.
  When the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) speaks I hope that she will take the opportunity to explain to any authority, of whatever party, seeking to impose niggling obstructions to deny people the chance of a lifetime, that that is not in compliance with her political party, and that she condemns strongly such practices. I believe that there are a number of tenants all over the country who feel that there are authorities who are seeking ways to frustrate their right to buy. It would be immensely helpful if the Labour Party, at national level, would condemn those practices unconditionally.
  Mr. Robert Atkins: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, while we are discussing an important Bill which deals with so many rights of tenants and other people, there are fewer than 10 Opposition Members in the House? They spend their time knocking the Government for raising important issues.
  Mr. Ted Graham: There are only 11 Members on the Government Back Benches.
  Mr. Heseltine: I am sure that many people will read what I have said, and its innate wisdom will be carried to a wider audience than those hon. Members present in the Chamber today. The good news will reach a large number of council tenants who will benefit.
  Mr. John Cartwright: The Secretary of State said that those people buying houses would have the same right of challenge as those people who are buying flats, with regard to service charges. Flat dwellers in my constituency have found that right to be ineffective. It involves court action, and it is not a practical proposition for a council tenant to take court action against a major local authority to deal with unreasonable service charges. Is the Secretary of State convinced that he is giving practical protection?
  Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman raises a difficult issue. The House can only make a determination based on a policy commitment and steer legislation through the parliamentary processes to the statute book. If local authorities, for whatever reason, seek to frustrate that legislation there is always the possibility that they will succeed temporarily. The Minister for Housing and Construction has done a valiant job in scrutinising a significant number of protests that have flowed from certain local authorities. By and large, the right to buy is being implemented now with enthusiasm and expedition.
  If an authority is abusing the purpose of legislation, for which Parliament gave its approval, it will be the duty of the Department of the Environment to listen to representations and do everything it possibly can to ensure that those council tenants get their rights. I dare say that we shall also have to explain if any one political party tries to introduce a political motivation into the interpretation of the statutory duties. If the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright) will give us details we shall consider carefully what we can do best to help.
  Mr. Allan Roberts: Are not many Conservative-controlled local authorities selling fewer council houses than some Labour authorities that are on the Secretary of State's hit list for not selling enough? For example, Blackpool is selling far fewer than Burnley, yet Burnley is under pressure from the Secretary of State.
  Mr. Heseltine: If the hon. Gentleman wishes to complain about a particular authority, or if he knows of tenants who wish to complain, we shall look at each case dispassionately. All I know is that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction has devoted himself to the closest scrutiny of these matters and I have been involved where appropriate. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can argue that the Labour Party is exactly blameless in respect of matters that are now causing him concern.
  Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is my right hon. Friend also aware that the city of Lancaster has always led the way in selling council houses, and managed to do so even when the Labour Government were in office?
  Mr. Heseltine: I have always borne that very much in mind.
  I have outlined the housing content of the legislation. Its provisions are evidence of our determination to deliver to tenants the rights granted them by Parliament. I shall continue to protect those rights, if necessary by using again my powers of intervention.
  Parts II and III relate to building control. The present system is far from ideal. Builders complain of the delays and costs which it imposes. Designers object to the limits that are imposed. Industry and commerce complain that it stifles development. That is not surprising, as the system has gradually grown up from controls imposed a century or more ago under local authority byelaws into a national system of great complexity. We now have the opportunity to make radical changes. The aim was set out in the White Paper published in February 1981. There has been intense discussion and consultation since that time, and the Bill will enable us to simplify the regulations.
  The first objective of this part of the Bill is to provide an opportunity for the industry to achieve greater self-regulation through a system of private certification of compliance with the building regulations. This will be an optional alternative available to builders and developers. They will still be able to have their buildings supervised by local authorities if they wish.
  The second objective is to provide for the approval of technical documents giving practical guidance on compliance with the building regulations. This will make it possible for the regulations themselves to be simpler and for them to be kept up to date more easily.
  For private certification, the Bill sets out a legal framework enabling approved inspectors to supervise building work. Many of the detailed arrangements will be dealt with by regulations at a later stage.
  The Bill provides for a developer and an approved inspector jointly to serve a notice on a local authority to the effect that the approved inspector—in other words, the certifier—will supervise the particular work. The notice will have to be accompanied by plans which will enable a local authority to carry out its other functions under the Public Health Acts. It will also have to be accompanied by evidence of insurance cover. If the notice is in order,

  723
  the local authority in that case will be obliged to accept that its duty to enforce the building regulations will be suspended, and the responsibility will rest with the certifier.
  Certifiers will be approved by the Secretary of State or by bodies designated by him, such as professional institutions. Approval can be restricted to particular types of buildings, depending on professional qualifications and experience. In future, public bodies approved by the Secretary of State will certify their own work, if they wish to, under the arrangements on the lines of those for private certification. It cannot be necessary to require bodies such as the Civil Aviation Authority to have their own work supervised by local authorities.
  Local authorities are also exempted from the procedural requirements of the regulations. They will be required to comply with the substantive regulations and will be trusted to do so. In no way are we lowering the standards, which will be maintained at a consistently high level nationally. It is the method by which we establish that the standards are complied with that is affected by the legislation.
  The Secretary of State will be empowered to approve documents from any source which offers suitable practical guidance on how to comply with the regulations. He is also able to delegate his powers in this respect, through an order laid before both Houses, to a body that he designates.
  Mr. Stephen Ross: One-man architect and surveyor businesses have expressed concern that they may lose business because of this provision, which personally I do not object to, in that they will be unable to get insurance cover, which is likely to be substantial. They fear that they will lose clients who wish to do their own certification. It is a job that small companies may be unable to undertake because of the expense involved in insurance cover.
  Mr. Heseltine: I do not think that this is a practical problem, because this sort of work even today is not open to the private sector. I expect that the large and skilled professional firms will become involved in the certification process. After all, they already play a significant role in the advice that they give to local authorities. A local authority may not have the professional competence to administer a complex scheme in its area on a once-and-for-all basis and may have to seek advice from professional private sector firms in those circumstances. That sort of pattern is more likely to develop. I doubt whether the work load of small design businesses will be affected by what we are proposing.
  Mr. Frank Allaun: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that he is helping or hindering the work of the housing associations? He must know that the National Federation of Housing Associations is opposed to the Bill. Is he aware that the Sutton housing trust, whose work in my constituency has been highly regarded, has said that its houses, which in many cases will be sold under the Bill, will no longer be available for renting by those who cannot afford to buy even on shared ownership terms? It is clear that the right hon. Gentleman is offending people who are trying to provide better housing.
  Mr. Heseltime: I am prepared to accept that I am offending the hon. Gentleman, and I accept his motivation
  724
  to try to provide better housing. However, if he gets out into the real world and looks at what has happened as a result of the policies in which he believes, he will understand that the people he represents simply will not believe in the theories that he propounds. The fascinating thing about the right to buy movement is how a social revolution in housing expectations is now taking place in the inner cities. The only group that persistently cannot see it is the Labour Party. The people on council waiting lists and local authority tenants willingly and enthusiastically embrace what is going on.
  Mrs. Ann Taylor: Not people on the waiting lists.
  Mr. Heseltine: Yes. The hon. Lady ought to visit Newham, where for years Labour authorities have denied the private sector the opportunity to develop houses for sale. When the private sector, under the London Docklands Corporation, began to develop houses for sale in Newham in the East End of London, 40 per cent. of those houses went to local authority tenants or people on the waiting lists. Those very people, under the normal regime of total Socialist suffocation, would have been forced out of the inner city areas to the suburbs where they then could have bought.
  The Labour Party, in its own best interests, must wake up to the dramatic change that is taking place. Local Labour councillors are aware of that change and appreciate the gap in thinking that exists between the Labour Party at local and national level.
  Mr. John Ward: My right hon. Friend is being too modest. Is not the only way to make funds available to those in real need of council housing to sell council houses? The money will certainly not be available if people who can afford to buy are sitting on council property and not releasing funds that should be used for those in real need.
  Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He knows that the Opposition, when in Government, cut local government's capital spending programmes in half. They took £3,500 million off housing and other local government capital programmes in their last four years in office. All Opposition Members went through the Lobby in support of that policy. They know full well that when in power they cut the programmes to ribbons. We are finding alternative sources of finance that are beginning to reverse the decline that we inherited.
  Mr. Michael Shersby: Would my right hon. Friend care to remind the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun) that additional funds have been made available to the Housing Corporation for the construction of new properties and the refurbishment of old ones and that that will help to replace many of the properties that will be sold under these provisions?
  Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend is right to remind me of the other £150 million for the Housing Corporation that I was able to announce last week. That is a manifestation of the fact that we have increased the funds of the Housing Corporation to the highest level, in cash terms, than ever before. We are completely behind the provision of a wide range of choice in inner city and housing policies. We utterly oppose any segregation that says for large parts of, usually Labour-controlled, Britain, "You will be a tenant of the local authority only if you want to stay here." In

  725
  those circumstances, people do not stay and those who are left behind are increasingly those who are less able to look after themselves.
  Mr. George Cunningham rose—
  Mr. Heseltine: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not give way. I have given way a great deal.
  The Bill is an extension of the initial right-to-buy legislaton that has had a profound effect on the fortunes of British working people. It has brought about a major shift of commitment and wealth in their direction. It carries through the objectives on which we were elected to ensure that there is a real choice for those who live in urban areas or on council estates.
  4.41 pm
  Mrs. Ann Taylor: The Secretary of State has confirmed that the Bill contains no new Government thinking. Indeed, it is more evidence of the Government's continued dogmatic and blinkered approach to Britain's housing problems. The Opposition resent the fact that parliamentary time is being spent on such irrelevant measures when Britain's housing problem is reaching crisis proportions.
  As the Minister said, the first part of the Bill is simply an extension of the right to buy. It is an extension of the Government's belief that the only way in which to deal with council housing is to sell it. First, they forced local authorities to sell to those who could afford to buy. Now that bonanza is coming to an end, they want to force councils to sell to those who cannot afford to buy. The right to shared ownership is designed for those who can afford to buy only half a council house.
  Such is the Conservative Party's zeal for owner-occupation that, not content with giving the right to buy to tenants of property in the public sector, they want to extend that right to tenants of charitable bodies. The Secretary of State did not make it clear whether he intends to follow through the logic of that argument in the Conservative Party's next manifesto. Will he extend that right to tenants of property in the private sector?
  Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: My right hon. Friend made that point clear.
  Mrs. Taylor: He said that it was not in his party's previous manifesto. We look forward to seeing whether he carries the logic of his actions through and whether it is included in the next Conservative Party manifesto.
  Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: The hon. Lady cannot have been listening. My right hon. Friend's words were that it is not proper for us to deal with private assets.
  Mrs. Taylor: Perhaps the hon. Lady will read in Hansard that part of the Secretary of State's speech which refers to the Conservative Party's manifesto. The Opposition look forward to seeing whether the Secretary of State carries through the logic of his argument and extends the right to buy, with discounts, to tenants in the private sector.
  The second part of the Bill deals with privatisation. Indeed, it is privatisation at its silliest. The Minister did not begin to justify the proposed building regulations changes. I doubt whether any one who listened to the Secretary of State or the Secretary of State himself has any
  726
  idea of the way in which those changes will work in practice. The Bill is so vague in this respect as to leave everyone in the dark about how the new regulations will operate.
  The Secretary of State has not been able to show that the high level of public safety that has been achieved under the existing system will be maintained. That is an essential factor in any change. He should not leave the House in any doubt. The new system may lead to public safety problems that he did not discuss or go into any detail about.
  Mr. Shersby: Would the hon. Lady clarify what she means by "public safety problems"? Is she suggesting that tenants who buy their homes through an equity sharing scheme are less able than a local authority to maintain the safety of their dwelling?
  Mrs. Taylor: I suggest that the hon. Gentleman listens more carefully. I was talking about building regulations. I shall go into that matter in more detail later.
  The Secretary of State dwelt on the right-to-buy aspects of the Bill. There is no doubt in his mind that the right to buy has been something of a success. He is nodding his head; he agrees. He believes that it is a success because there are now far fewer council houses than there were three years ago. Neither homeless people nor those on council house waiting lists regard it as a Government success.
  The original enthusiasm of the Government's sales policy has worn off. That is why we have been presented with the Bill. It is intended to give another artificial stimulus to council house sales so that their total will reach the Government's magic figure of 500,000. That is why the right to shared ownership is being introduced.
  The Secretary of State mentioned what he considers are some of the advantages of shared ownership. There are also many problems that he conveniently forgot to tell us about. With regard to the tenant, there is the disadvantage that, although he has only a 50 per cent. stake in his home, he must be fully responsible for repairs. For the local authority's part, there is a considerable additional administrative burden when the Secretary of State is placing further pressure on local authorities to reduce staff. The sale of a 50 per cent. share in a house will involve more work for the local authority than selling it outright and the cost of collecting half the rent will be no less than the cost of collecting the full rent.
  Many questions remain to be answered about the way in which shared ownership will operate. We should be told more about the implications for the tenant, whose status needs to be defined more clearly. We must ask what will happen if the tenant-buyer gets into arrears with his rent or mortgage, or both. Many people who are buying their council houses are finding it difficult to meet their mortgage repayments. We need to know what will happen to inheritors of shared ownership dwellings or what will happen in the event of a marriage breakdown.
  Although shared ownership has existed voluntarily in the public sector in a few places, sales under shared ownership schemes are numbered in hundreds rather than in thousands. The experience is limited in the private sector and housing associations.
  Even the present Secretary of State should consider whether it is wise to force shared ownership on the public sector as a right when so many problems that have not yet been resolved still loom. We have not come to expect a

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  great deal of wisdom from the Secretary of State. We know that he will do anything to boost the sales of council houses and those in the public sector while he still has a chance—however long that may be. That is one aspect that we shall oppose and that we shall want to examine in great detail in Committee.
  The other extension of the right to buy—to tenants in properties where the landlord does not own the freehold—will also have to be examined. At the time of the Housing Act 1980 the Government thought it better to leave alone this type of dwelling. The Secretary of State has proved today that Ministers in his Department not only fail to learn anything but that they forget even what they do know. They will force even more problems on local authorities and housing associations which may have to fulfil obligations to the freeholder, for example, over the state of repair of the property. It is one more example of another problem glibly thrown on to the local authorities by the Secretary of State who will then berate them for employing staff to sort out the difficulties.
  The measures proposed by the Secretary of State with regard to the extension of the right to buy to tenants of charitable housing associations and trusts is important. It should concern all those who are involved in charitable work. Few people can devote time and energy to their particular charity in the hope that the beneficiaries of that work are the lucky few affected by the Bill. Never before can any Government have proposed such a diversion of voluntary charitable work into private gain. I should have thought that the Charity Commissioners would have something to say about the matter in due course.
  The Government are saying that properties acquired or built after 1974 with housing association grants are subject to the right to buy. We are not, however, discussing public property.
  Mr. John Heddle: Does the hon. Lady agree that the Housing Corporation funds are taxpayers' funds—in other words, public money?
  Mrs. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman is correct. The money that the housing associations get is taxpayers' money. The money that the housing associations pay back to the Government accrues to the taxpayer. The property we are discussing is not public property. Public money goes into it and the housing associations repay that money. It is not public money. If the Secretary of State wishes to give the House a new definition of public property, I wonder whether he will include those properties to which improvement grants have been given. Also, are private landlords who receive improvement grants to come under the definition of public property? If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to redefine public property, hon. Members would be interested to hear him.
  The proposed legislation cuts across all the provisions of the charitable housing trusts and attacks the basis on which many charities were founded. It forces these charities to sell at a discount. It takes no account of the overall interest or the basic reason for the existence of the charity itself. By interfering in the manner in which charities operate, the Government have created a dangerous precedent, and a legally complex problem which should concern even Conservative Members.
  I hope that the Government realise—although I doubt it after hearing the Secretary of State—the alarm that the
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  proposals are causing among those who work in charities. They are only just waking up to the dramatic effect of the proposals in the Bill. Only this morning I received three letters from different charities. One says of the Bill:
  "This is contrary to natural justice and cuts clean across charity law. I can tell you plainly that we are fiercely opposed to this notion of compulsory sales which cuts clean across our independence and the responsibility of the trustees".
  Another letter from the Sutton housing trust points out that the associations concerned will have contributed substantial charitable effort and in some cases charitable funds. These are the groups now attacked by the Secretary of State and told that they must sell off their assets regardless of the impact on their ability to deal with housing problems.
  Mr. J. F. Pawsey: Would the hon. Lady be interested to know that the Sutton housing trust owns houses in my constituency, that my constituents have tried to purchase houses from the trust and that the trust has refused and will not enter into negotiations? Is she aware that this prevents tenants from purchasing the houses in which they live?
  Mrs. Taylor: There are also Sutton trust houses in my constituency. They exist for people on low incomes. It is right that the Sutton trust should refuse to sell those houses. I am sure that in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, as in mine, there are long waiting lists of people on low incomes who would dearly like to live in a Sutton trust property.
  Mr. Neil Thorne: Does the hon. Lady agree that ordinary council housing is also designed for people on low incomes?
  Mr. Allan Roberts: Not any more.
  Mrs. Taylor: I am glad that the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) makes that point. One would think from listening to the Secretary of State that council housing was designed to be sold at a fantastic discount to those who could afford to buy. Ministers and Conservative Members do not normally take sufficient account of those whom the hon. Gentleman says that council housing is designed to help.
  The Government's arguments take no account of reality. The Secretary of State says that all housing associations, including the charitable ones, receive public money by way of grant. So do private landlords. No right exists there. The Secretary of State has given no sign that he expects to extend the right to buy into that sector. Conservative Members choose to forget that housing association grants are repayable through the grant redemption fund. Whichever way one looks at the issue, the Minister has no right to intervene.
  Mr. Allan Roberts: Will my hon. Friend try to ascertain from the Secretary of State whether properties above Parker Morris standard built by housing associations since 1974, partly with grants from central Government but also through an input of charitable finance—Help the Aged and Anchor Housing are examples—are to be sold? If there is any charitable input, will the properties be exempt?
  Mrs. Taylor: I am sure that the Secretary of State will be eager to clarify the point and assure hon. Members that the financial efforts of charities and the efforts in time and energy of the people involved in them will be taken into

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  account and that the charities will be compensated for the work that they have done. As the right hon. Gentleman shows no sign that this is the case, I assume that the answer to my hon. Friend's question is "No", and that charitable housing association properties will be sold without any regard to the work done previously.
  Mr. Heseltine: That is not the case. The hon. Lady will be aware that there is protection for the funds of the charities in those circumstances.
  Mrs. Taylor: Is the Secretary of State saying that, if there has been an input of charitable work and charitable funds into housing associations to improve the standard of housing, they will be reimbursed or that the houses will not form part of the right-to-buy provisions of the Bill?
  Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Lady will want to explore this matter in detail in Committee. I wish only to clarify the point that she pursues. Her comments are ill founded. Where private charitable money has flowed into the houses, there will be protection for the private charitable funds and arrangements made to protect those funds. The precise manner in which this is done will have to be carefully examined. The background is complex. I am informed, however, that we shall be able to find ways of dealing with the point.
  Mrs. Taylor: I am glad that the Secretary of State intervened to clarify that point. We look forward to his justification of what he said. All that he has said is that he does not know the answer to the question. It would be charitable to leave that point there and to let the Minister for Housing and Construction answer in more detail later.
  With regard to charitable properties, the Secretary of State is taking no account of the practical difficulties that will inevitably arise. It will be impossible for the housing charities to replace the homes that they are forced to sell. The receipts after discounts and repayments of outstanding loans will be minimal. We know that the charitable organisations will not be able to replace those properties.
  Therefore, the ability of the charities to fulfil their obligations will be seriously curtailed. Moreover, the proposal will be divisive because some tenants with the right to buy will make a good profit on later resale due to the improvements to an area made by housing associations, especially in the inner cities, about which the Secretary of State expresses so much concern. At the same time, other tenants of the same charitable trust will be excluded from the right to buy and will not be able to get anything.
  In one street one could have, and probably will have, tenants of housing trusts who have lived in properties for 10 years but are unable to buy their property, whereas their neighbours, whose property was acquired later by the trust and is therefore more modern and who may have been tenants for only about four years, will be able to buy the property at a large discount. Subsequently they will be able to make a large profit on the sale. I look forward to a Minister telling us where the justice is in that. The Secretary of State is creating many problems for housing associations, which will have to explain all that detail to tenants.
  As I said, the measures are rightly causing alarm among the charitable groups affected. They will prove an administrative and perhaps a legal nightmare for the associations concerned. They pose a threat to all charities
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  that accept Government grants, even those that repay those grants. We shall oppose the provisions vigorously in Committee. We look forward to support from many quarters. I only wish that there were more support from Conservative Members.
  I must restate our basic opposition to the right to buy as the Government have created it. None of the arguments that were put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) and others in 1980 is any less relevant now. They become more pertinent as our housing crisis intensifies.
  We argued in 1980 that the nation could not afford the loss of rented accommodation created by the 1980 Act. Since then sales, combined with the abysmally low levels of replacement building that the Government allowed, have led to a drop in the number of public sector homes. I do not see how the Secretary of State can think that it is good to lose so many rented properties when all around him are so many signs of the need for good rented accommodation.
  My right hon. Friend said in 1980 that we could not afford the loss of that rented accommodation. Events have proved him right. However, one thing has changed since the debates in 1980, and that is the cost of the sales policy. At the time many questions were asked, such as: "Will council house sales create a profit or a loss?" The Secretary of State said that that depended on 'the assumptions that were made.
  One of the crucial assumptions was about rent levels. The Government issued a cheerful-sounding document called:
  "The appraisal of the financial effects of council house sales".
  They made a number of assumptions about rent levels. In that now amazing document rents were assumed by the Government to rise by a minimum of 3 per cent. and a maximum of 11 per cent. per year. Then the Secretary of State's rent directives forced up rents by 117 per cent., with more increases to come. Part of the reason for the increase in rents was the encouragement of sales, but one of the effects has been to increase the cost of sales for local authorities.
  One of the remarkable ironies is that the buyer of a council home may receive more subsidy as an owner-occupier than he did as a council tenant, yet the Government still portray council tenants as the subsidised sector of society. We were opposed to compulsory sales in 1980. Everything that has happened since reinforces our opposition.
  Mr. Heseltine: I take it that the hon. Lady will therefore be committed to the repeal of the right to buy.
  Mrs. Taylor: I am happy to tell the Secretary of State that we are committed to the repeal of the right to buy. We shall say so in our election manifesto. [HON. MEMBERS: "And a rent freeze.") As my hon. Friends remind me, we are also committed to a rent freeze. That will do more to help council tenants than all that the Secretary of State has done in the past three years.
  Mr. Heddle: The hon. Lady has committed a future Labour Government to a rent freeze. How does she square that commitment with the findings of her party when in Government in 1977 in a Green Paper, which stated that council house rents should rise in line with money incomes?
  Mrs. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman does not seem to be aware of what the Conservative Government have done to council house rents over the past three years.
  Mr. Frank Allaun: Would it not be more accurate to say that compulsory sales by councils will be ended by the next Labour Government? Are not the Secretary of State and Conservative Members forgetting that the councils that are being forced to sell or part-sell will have to pay, and continue to pay, the interest on the cost of those houses for the next 60 years?
  Mrs. Taylor: My hon. Friend is right. Many Conservative Members do not understand that repealing the right to buy means allowing local authorities to decide whether they will sell council houses in their own areas. That is what Labour Party policy has always been. I am happy to reiterate it.
  The Secretary of State did not say much about the part of the Bill that deals with building controls. The present building controls system in England and Wales is concerned primarily to ensure that new buildings and extensions are erected to a high standard and are safe both for those who occupy them and for those who pass by them. Councils that are responsible for the building regulations have administered them effectively, drawing on the expertise of practical and experienced building professionals. The ability of the system to ensure the safety of new buildings has rarely been questioned. Even now it has not been challenged by the Government, despite their intentions in the Bill.
  How the new system will work, and if the new system will work, is not yet clear. The Secretary of State has not clarified the system. We are being asked to take on trust a new system to replace one that has proved itself to be inherently safe and effective. The Government have not said whether the replacement system can maintain such high standards. If certification is introduced along the lines suggested by the Government in consultation papers there will be a direct threat to the safety of buildings. Although the new private inspectors will be independent, they may rely on a few developers for their work, so they could become less than independent.
  The system of building control must be above reproach. Building control officers in local authorities are independent and do not owe their position to any one developer. That must continue. Anything else would be unacceptable.
  Moreover, if developers are allowed to go to independent inspectors, it will be difficult for local authorities to establish their work load in any one year. They will not be in a position to respond to substantial increases in the amount of work or to deal with developments originally privately certified but subsequently returned to local authorities for control. If certifiers can be found to operate the scheme, local authorities will be left with just the complex and contentious schemes. Their experienced building control staff may by then have joined private firms, thus reducing the capacity of local authorities to deal with complex developments. This, too, must introduce a possible threat to safety standards, as well as maximise the problems for local authorities.
  Mr. Michael Latham: Does the hon. Lady realise that, when she speaks about safety from the Opposition Front Bench, it is a matter of importance? Is
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  she in effect saying that if a private developer were to use an independent private certifier, a member of a professional institution, there might be occasions when that professional would do his work deliberately badly and not certify and inspect properly?
  Mrs. Taylor: If the hon. Gentleman checks, he will find that I did not say that the professional would do his work "deliberately badly". I said that it was important that the people who do the work should be independent and should be seen to be independent.
  Not just Labour Members and local authorities are anxious about the new proposals. The hon. Member for Melton (Mr. Latham) spoke about professional people. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which I think he would acknowledge has a right to have its voice heard on this matter, has said:
  "The Institution's considered view remains that it would neither be in the public interest nor that of the building industry to remove building controls from local authorities."
  The Bill has been described to me as a charter for developers who have fallen out with local government.
  There is an important basic principle at stake because the enforcement of building control regulations is really law enforcement. In some countries, building inspectors are known, quite rightly, as building police. The Secretary of State is proposing to give this law enforcement function to private citizens. This is an unprecedented move, and one that comes strangely from a Government who are supposed to be devoted to law and order. Not only does the Secretary of State intend to place in private hands responsibility for enforcing regulations designed to ensure public safety, but he intends to give himself free reign to do it without consulting anybody.
  Clause 38 removes the obligation placed on the Secretary of State by legislation to consult the Building Regulations Advisory Committee and other bodies before making regulations. In future, his obligations to consult will be limited to technical matters, and no doubt the Secretary of State thinks that that is wise in view of his recent consultation experience. I do not think that those concerned with building regulations support the moves that the Secretary of State is proposing. That is why he will be happy not to consult them in future.
  I have been talking about what the Bill is about—the tenants' right to buy and building control. That seems to be the sum total of what the Government think is necessary in housing. Yet, as the Secretary of State and his colleagues remind us daily, the prime need in housing is for increased capital expenditure—expenditure to improve and repair our rapidly deteriorating housing stock and for new build. It comes as a delightful surprise, after three years of the Opposition trying to persuade the Secretary of State of the need for spending, to find that we are suddenly preaching to the converted. If this is a real conversion, it is good, but it depends whether we can take what the Secretary of State says at face value.
  The problem is that the Secretary of State knows as well as anyone that the vast majority of local authorities are spending their capital allocations and cannot plan in advance to spend uncertain capital receipts.
  Mr. Heseltine: Rubbish.
  Mrs. Taylor: The right hon. Gentleman says "Rubbish", and is therefore asking local authorities to plan to spend money that they cannot be sure that they will

  733
  receive. I should not have thought that the Secretary of State would approve of that. If local authorities were to spend before receiving authorisation, I should have thought that the Secretary of State would be the first to criticise them.
  Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Lady must be aware that local authorities have £600 million from last year, which is quite a substantial sum. They should be able to make use of that.
  Mrs. Taylor: The Secretary of State was complaining that the local authorities did not spend the money last year. However, they did not know in advance that they would receive it, and could not have planned for that amount of spending.
  Mr. Heseltine: The local authorities now have it, and can spend it this year, but they are not spending it.
  Mrs. Taylor: I wish that the local authorities thought that the position was as simple as that, because if they were sure that they would have that money and that the Secretary of State would let them spend it and meet the revenue consequences of that expenditure, they would be very pleased.
  The Secretary of State should be aware that one of the main stumbling blocks on capital spending is that local authorities are uncertain about capital allocations for future years. If the Secretary of State is so anxious to increase capital spending, why does not the Bill contain provision for giving local authorities some machinery by which they can be given security about the level of capital expenditure for two or three years ahead? If the Secretary of State is so anxious about capital spending, I wonder whether he would give effect to it by supporting an amendment in Committee that could bring some forward planning into the existing machinery for allocating capital spending to local authorities.
  From what the Secretary of State has said, it seems that he has no other causes for concern about housing than the right to buy. However, the Bill will clearly make no significant impact on the parts of the housing crisis to which the Government have turned a blind eye. There is no mention of help for the homeless, yet the number of homeless families has reached a record level. It is a year since the Department quietly published a report called "Single and Homeless", which showed clearly that for the vast majority of single homeless the overriding need was for ordinary, reasonably priced rented houses. The report came from the Department of the Environment, but there is nothing in the Bill to help the homeless.
  There is the problem of houses in multiple occupation. It is true that the Department introduced regulations last year after yet another tragic hostel fire. However, they cover only the larger hostels. They would have done nothing to prevent most fire tragedies in the past, and they do nothing to ensure adequate standards in hostels generally.
  Although the Bill will help some council tenants to buy, it does nothing for the rest—the majority. Why does not the Secretary of State try to do something for them by ensuring that they will get more for the increased rent that he is forcing them to pay? If councils are making a profit out of their tenants, as many are, there is surely a case for ensuring that tenants receive the benefit of that profit in better services.
  Why do not the Government extend the tenants' charter? They took over the Labour tenants' charter and
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  put it into the 1980 Act. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Conservative Members seem to have a short memory. Their party took over our tenants' charter and put it into the 1980 Act.
  Mr. Freeson: Would my hon. Friend advise Conservative Members to go to the Library instead of laughing and get a copy of the published Bill of the Labour Government? The tenants' charter which the Tories took over and partly amended downwards was published and it was intended that it should be put in legislation before the 1979 general election.
  Mrs. Taylor: Many Conservative Members are well known for having selective memories and it might do them good to refresh them.
  The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. John Stanley): Perhaps the hon. Lady will go to the Library and see the Private Member's Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Eyre) now Under-Secretary of State for Transport. She will notice that the then Labour Administration voted down the tenants' charter.
  Mrs. Taylor: Perhaps the Minister will look at the Labour Government's Bill, which was published, and at its details. Indeed, he should look at it, because one of the bits that this Government subsequently left out of their legislation was the right of tenants to be consulted about rents. The Labour Government proposed that. After three years of rent increases from a Conservative Government, we can understand why they left out that provision.
  I come to the provisions in the Bill and those, more importantly, that have been left out. Perhaps it would be naive to expect the Government to concern themselves with the problems of the homeless, and single and public sector tenants who cannot afford to take advantage of the right to buy. In the past three and a half years the Government's priorities have been clear, and they are not related to housing need. One of the Department of the Environment's internal documents—for Central Office, I suspect—proves that point. The paper is called "The Department of the Environment—A Synopsis of Main Developments, May 1979-November 1982" and has a long section on housing. It mentions the right to buy, shared ownership, homesteading, shortholds, assured tenancies—all 21 of them—and the other fringe measures that the Government have introduced to divert attention from the main problem. However, the document quite wisely makes no mention of house building. After all, why should the Secretary of State publicise the fact that the Government's figures on housing starts are the worst since 1924?
  The Secretary of State is now shedding crocodile tears about capital expenditure, yet, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ardwick pointed out last Monday, when the Secretary of State introduced his so-called new deal on spending, that new deal represents a further 14 per cent. cut. In reality, the Government are simply trying to create a good impression with the big builders. After all, the general election draws near and contributions will once again be required. The Bill does nothing to alleviate the housing crisis that the Government have created, and we shall oppose it tonight.
  5.24 pm
  Mr. Sydney Chapman: I am extremely glad to have been called unusually early in the debate. It is a great pleasure to speak after the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor). I should like to take up some of her points about parts II and III of the Bill. With respect, I do not think she quite understands the role of the professional in the building industry. Certain professional people may be among those who are approved inspectors under the Government's proposals. The hon. Lady made one or two remarks that seemed to impugn the integrity of such people.
  I hope that the hon. Member for Bolton, West will forgive me if I do not take up her comments on part I concerning the extension of the right to buy. The arguments were well rehearsed during discussion of the Housing Bill 1980. However, there is a fundamental difference about the Government's right to allow council tenants to buy their homes, because the State is the owner—whether it is central Government, Government Department, or local authority. It must be remembered that local authorities are part of the State. They draw most of their revenue from Government block grants and therefore there is a fundamental difference between homes which the State owns and homes which a private citizen owns.
  I welcome part I because I believe in the principle of the right to buy and in the extension of home ownership. It is right that those who were forbidden by the 1980 Act to buy their council homes because the lands on which their properties stood were held on leaseholds should have the right to buy, as well as certain tenants of housing associations and trusts. On the wider housing issues already raised in the debate, I commend the Government on the way in which they have enacted a range of proposals that emphasise the important role in housing policy of partnership between the private sector and the local authority. I need mention only shared ownership, homesteading and the breaking up, through ownership, of vast council estates. Those estates led to social divisions within the country. Therefore, I welcome the enactment of such measures.
  It would be appropriate and prudent of me to declare such interests as I have. I am a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, although no one will dispute that I am a non-practising architect. I am also a non-executive director of a development company and of a construction company.
  Part III of the Bill deeply interests me. It has always surprised me that four different sets of building regulations should apply to different parts of the United Kingdom: to inner London, to the rest of England and Wales, to Scotland, and to Northern Ireland. Ideally there should be one set of building regulations that cover the whole of the United Kingdom, but I realise that that would be difficult because I understand—although I am not a lawyer—that there is a different legal system in Scotland and Northern Ireland. However, if the Bill is enacted and new regulations are issued, I hope that the Government will seriously consider whether Scotland and Northern Ireland should follow suit.
  I am equally amazed that within each of those four parts of the United Kingdom one necessarily comprehensive set of building regulations should cover all types and sizes of building. The regulations apply equally to the erection of
  736
  simple structures and of technically complicated structures that are built in different materials. There is a case for separating those building regulations. There is every reason to suspect that the building regulations at present are in many respects too complex and confusing. They are cumbersome and in some ways—I do not wish to exaggerate—unnecessarily bureaucratic. On occasion, they are too inflexible. They inhibit innovation, particularly in design, and they impose unnecessary costs.
  Mr. Freeson: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the two main objectives of reform should be the more effective expansion or development of type certification and the simplification of the consultation process, to foreshorten it? Will the hon. Gentleman please accept that the Bill does nothing to help in that way or to reduce the complexity and bureaucracy of the system?
  Mr. Chapman: I hesitate to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, because he has immense experience in Government of dealing with such matters. However, with respect, I do not entirely agree about those two points. There are many other significant factors. However, I promise to re-think what the hon. Gentleman has said, because I have great respect for his experience.
  Throughout the industry, there is widespread dissatisfaction and it extends further than the big builders. People are dissatisfied about the scope and form of the existing regulations. Those regulations could be simplified. It is no contradiction to suggest that there could be separate regulations for, for example, small structures, housing, industrial buildings and for public and commercial buildings. I ask my right hon. Friend earnestly to consider that matter.
  Above all, I want the regulations to be unified so that they cover the whole of the United Kingdom. I note, of course, that the Bill refers only to England and Wales, because of the different legal systems. Perhaps at this stage I might pay a sincere tribute to the work of the Minister's building regulations advisory committee. It does difficult and sterling work under the chairmanship of Mr. David Llewellyn. I hope that the committee will be called upon to advise and perhaps suggest drafts for the new regulations.
  I welcome particularly the way in which the regulations are to be divided so that there are mandatory requirements which must be carried out, and which relate obviously to basic safety and health matters.
  Mr. Graham: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, although the Secretary of State talked about 100 years of bureaucracy and disagreement with the building regulations, it was only as recently as 1965 that there was a major review of building regulations, when they were made more flexible? Is it not true that, without this legislation, a similar review and improvement of building regulations could well have taken place?
  Mr. Chapman: I disagree with the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Graham) for two reasons. As he knows, technical innovation is taking place in the construction and building industry at an almost frightening pace. Secondly, the building regulations have to be changed from year to year. That is done, although the process is far too tortuous. However, that does not impinge in any way on what I am saying and on what is laid down in the Bill.
  We need a second category of building regulations to give guidance on other matters. In the introduction it was

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  called, I think, performance standards. Clearly the Government will draw on the use of codes of practice and the British Standards Institute's specifications.
  I want to put two suggestions to my right hon. Friend. First, I hope that the practical guidance part of the proposed building regulations, as with all parts of the present regulations, will be an absolute defence in law. The aggrieved party should be in a position to use compliance with the regulations in a court of law. I accept that these are immensely complicated and technical issues, and perhaps more suitable for debate in Standing Committee, but with respect, there should be a better means of resolving arguments and disputes. May I remind the House that originally the procedures for dealing with disputes were laid down in section 64(3) of the Public Health Act 1936. Disputes were dealt with by a court of summary jurisdiction, which I am reliably informed means a magistrates' court. As I suggested, in answer to an intervention, building law has become much more sophisticated and complex. I suggest that magistrates' courts may not be the best body to deal with such legal disputes.
  I realise that, alternatively, an aggrieved party can go to the Secretary of State for determination under the existing legislation, but only if both parties—the applicant and the local authority—agree. That is under section 67 of the 1936 Act. This new Bill will extinguish that right. I accept that an aggrieved person can go to the Secretary of State, but he can do so only if the guidance note or performance standard is written. That, as I understand it, is the meaning of clause 35 of the Bill.
  I ask the Government seriously to consider widening clause 35 so that any party unilaterally may go to the Secretary of State on any dispute relating to any part of the new building regulations, whether the aggrieved person is dealing with a local authority or with one of the approved inspectors. I understand that at present it is intended to apply only when the dispute is with the local authority. Such a change as I propose could be practically implemented and frivolous appeals to the Secretary of State would be prevented in my opinion because fees would be payable.
  Part II introduces certification, or approved inspectors. In my view, that is sensible and right. I welcome, in particular, the proposals for public authorities to selfcertify—if I may use that piece of shorthand—because there is some illogicality in the present set-up. If a county council wants to build houses for the police, it has to get building regulations approval from the local district authority. On the other hand, if a regional health authority wants to build a hospital, or an electricity board wants to erect a sub-station, or British Rail wants to put up a signal box, they do not need to get permission from the local district authority. The Bill gets rid of the wasteful and costly exercise of double-checking, when competent people in private sector companies and in public bodies have to have their work double-checked by other competent people. Therefore, the Government are taking a perfectly reasonable step in this respect.
  Finally, there is a matter which I believe is directly related to this issue but which, alas—perhaps understandably—is not in the Bill. My right hon. Friend, in introducing parts II and III, spoke of the twin objectives in his proposals for the new building regulations. The first was the introduction of certification and approved inspectors. The second was the simplification—and, I
  738
  hope, the unification and change in the scope and form—of building regulations. In my view, all these are inextricably involved in the law of liability, when subsequent defects are found in buildings. It is both essential and vital to deal with this matter, since the House of Lords decision on the Anns v. the London borough of Merton case. I find it astonishing that there is no time limit to liability in the present law. I always understood, for example, that for architects the liability was six years. Others may say that it was 10 years. I do not make a special plea for the professional group of people with which I was once associated. This matter is just as vital for local authorities and builders as it is for architects. I invite my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction, if he is to wind up this evening, to deal with this matter, because in my view it is urgent. He may say that the matter cannot be dealt with in this Bill, and I would understand that. However, it should be a first priority of the Government to introduce amending legislation to deal with the law of liability.
  This is a necessarily complex measure, dealing with the technicalities of building. It affects fundamentally important aspects of the housing and construction industry. In my view, it goes in the right direction. Certain details need careful consideration and improvement—if I may presume to say that—in Standing Committee. I fervently believe that the building regulations can be simplified and unified without detriment to health and safety standards, both during and after construction. I congratulate the Government on their initiative. I commend the Bill to the House. I shall support it in the Lobby tonight.
  5.39 pm
  Mr. Reginald Freeson: First, I put on record my interest in matters that are the subject of the Bill. In an honorary capacity, I am associated with several charitable housing associations.
  Much has recently been made by the Secretary of State, the Minister for Housing and Construction and the Prime Minister of the alleged failure of local authorities to spend their capital provision, despite their having been instructed by the Government to cut back on that expenditure for the past three and a half years.
  We must understand what happens to capital receipts that remain unspent, either in a single year or from one year to the next. Ministers are responsible for much myth-making on that subject. There is an idea—it arose in exchanges earlier—that there is about £1,500 million of capital receipts knocking around in local government which has not been spent and which the Government now want spent on capital investment. Welcome as Government statements in the past couple of weeks have been, they know perfectly well that only a marginal part of that sum could be spent between now and 31 March.
  More particularly, it must be said that the Government are not informing the House or the public accurately about this matter. Local authorities cannot generally be expected to plan capital investment in new construction on a 12-monthly basis when they do not know what money will be available.
  It is not good enough for the Secretary of State, supported by his right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Environmental Services, to ask why local authorities do not spend the £600 million from last year. Do the Minister and Conservative Back Benchers think

  739
  that that £600 million is in a series of boxes somewhere in town halls? If the Government can argue or believe that, they have not the slightest idea how local government finances are organised. It is astonishing that the Secretary of State should make such a statement at the Dispatch Box, and have it endorsed from a sedentary position by the Minister of Housing and Construction, and for similar statements to be made in the country.
  As these matters have come to the fore in recent weeks, I have put several questions to the Secretary of State. I have asked him whether he would advise local authorities to use any, or a significant, part of their capital receipts to reduce rate burdens. It was clear from the answers that I received that he did not understand what I was saying. If he did understand, he was misleading the House and the public in his replies.
  The money is being spent. It is being used to refinance existing debts, to reduce likely rates at the end of the financial year and being put into various accounts to reduce current and prospective expenditure this year and next. It is nonsense to suggest that £600 million of capital receipts is lying around somewhere waiting to be spent on bricks and mortar. It has been put into balances, paid off existing debts or partly financed new debts—new loans that are being raised for capital expenditure last year and in the current year. It cannot just be picked out of a box and spent on housing or any other construction activity.
  The same must be said of the other £900 million to £1,000 million. That is not lying around waiting to be spent. It is being spent. The issue is how local authorities should spend the money. Should it be spent on reducing the rate burdens, which Ministers have been urging local authorities to do, or should they spend it on capital investment that will produce revenue and carry rate burdens further in the coming years? Interest rates have come down recently, but they are still high on borrowings.
  I do not wish to pursue the matter beyond that point. I hope that there will be some intelligent discussion of such figures in future by Ministers, whether in the House or elsewhere, and not the myth-making nonsense that they have been putting around in the past few weeks and months.
  The word "months" brings me to a point that I have mentioned previously in the House. I was in correspondence with the Minister for Housing and Construction in the early summer about statements made by him and others on the likely underspend on allocations, never mind capital receipts. He will recall our correspondence in May and June this year which emerged from even earlier correspondence on related matters. To this day I have not had a reply to my final letter. I urged him then to do precisely what the Secretary of State proposed in a big statement to the House only a week ago. What was going on between June and November?
  I urged that free rein should be given to local authorities and housing associations which wanted and were physically able to spend more, while other authorities, for various reasons, were underspending, according to the Minister. He rejected that proposal and said, in so many words, that it would be considered next year. He suggested that if local authorities wanted to switch their resources around within their budgets, they would be free to do so.
  It took the Government several months to come to the House to make good some reasonable part of the
  740
  underspend about which the Minister was talking as early as June and July this year. That is unforgivable. The Government are playing politics with an important matter in the worst possible way.
  That leads me to my next point. It is not possible for local authorities to maintain reasonable programmes of investment if housing associations and corporations are being confined to 12-monthly budgeting. The Labour Government made limited but effective moves to end that nonsense. It took much arguing with the Treasury and inside the Department, but from 1978 onwards local authorities were at least able to extend their budgeting by 10 per cent. one year into the next or claw back 10 per cent. of their budget provision for the current year without interference by the Department. We were also able to give a base capital allocation for the second year in a three-yearly cycle. The ultimate objective was to make allocations on a three-yearly basis. By our deeds shall we know ourselves. We took steps in that direction.
  What happened under this Government? They dropped those measures and went back to 12-monthly budgets on capital provision for both local authorities and housing associations. Worse still, in some areas of housing there is more detailed interference in local authorities' capital allocations, limited as such allocations may be, than there was 10 or 15 years ago.
  More than 15 years ago, the local authority in Brent wanted to purchase old, run-down houses on a programmatic basis for modernisation without subsidy. In those days there were no subsidies or grants. In difficult housing conditions, we were prepared to do it out of our own resources. We negotiated the agreement of the then Minister and Department to block loan sanctions so that we had flexibility in the use of resources within the 12-month period. We said that we wanted to spend up to a certain amount and asked whether we had to obtain the agreement of the Department for every property that we wanted to buy, which was the position at that time. We negotiated block loan sanctions so that we could programme our work and run efficient departments. Hon. Members should ask local authorities what they now have to do.
  The Minister will know from correspondence from me about my own authority that it was not a matter even of asking for more resources, although we have done that too. I said to him that I was not arguing about more resources, because that would be for another time. I asked for authority to be given to the borough council, within the limits that the Minister had imposed, to spend what it considered necessary to improve, rehabilitate and convert properties into flats in areas which were outside general improvement and housing action areas. What was his answer? He said that he did not like to see municipalisation of properties and that, therefore, he would continue to require local authorities to apply for permission to purchase houses that they wished to rehabilitate and modernise before they could go ahead.
  That is happening all over London and in every major city in Britain. Therefore, how can it be argued that local authorities have effective administrative instruments at their disposal to programme work in an efficient and economic way when there is more interference today than 15 years ago?
  I urge the Minister to consider this again. It is separate from the total level of resources. If we cannot get agreement on this matter, how can we expect other than

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  underspend in many instances in local government? Local authorities must be given the capacity to organise and to programme for more than just a few weeks, a few months or 12 months ahead. I urge that this should be allowed. In addition, they should he told over as long a period as possible what their capital allocation will be, irrespective of capital receipts which may or may not be forthcoming.
  Do the Government and Conservative Members who are seriously concerned about housing rather than merely sloganising about it really believe that without genuine assessment of housing need and demand at local, regional and national level, which was the original underlying theme of the housing strategies and investment programmes, we should participate in a run-down of the total number—irrespective of the ownership—of rented properties in Britain?
  Are Conservative Members and even Ministers aware that for the first time in half a century we have fewer rented properties in Britain as a result of a major indiscriminate selling-off by compulsion of properties that in many instances might justifiably not have been sold off?
  If we want sensible policy at local, regional and national level, it should be based on the best-known assessment of housing need and demand in as minute an area as can possibly be examined and analysed. Macro and sweeping legislation does no good to sensible housing policy. It creates a position in which, unknown to most of us—possibly unknown to the Government and to many people who speak to me on this issue—for the first time in half a century we have a significantly smaller number of rented properites.
  Until the past year or so, there had been a loss of between 100,000 and 120,000 units of rented accommodation in the private sector, chiefly as a result of sales into owner-occupation. Many factors underlie that position, but I do not wish to pursue them in detail today. They can be argued one way or the other—politically, economically and socially. But we also had, year by year, as a result of new legislation, 100,000 or more rented properties being made available by local authorites and housing associations and adding to the stocks. What was lost on one side was made good on the other.
  Until a year or so ago there were about 6 million rented properties in Britain. That was the approximate figure—allowing a few thousand one way or the other—that existed in 1945. The total number had not gone down. Now, with the Government's ideologically obsessional policy translated into legislation without any concern for the detail of need and demand, hundreds of thousands of properties, which until now have been rented, are being transferred into owner-occupation by compulsion. That approach is fundamentally wrong. It is wrong that, without concern for a proper examination of need and demand, we should end up for the first time in our history with a significant reduction in the total number of rented properties—a reduction by hundreds of thousands.
  Mr. Robin Squire: Would the right hon. Gentleman extend the description "ideological obsession" to those of his colleagues who regularly condemn private renting and who, by doing so and by a refusal to encourage people to bring properties on to the market, have equally played a great part in reducing the numbers of properties available for rent?
  Mr. Freeson: I condemn any obsession in housing, from wherever it comes. However, let me make it quite clear that I do not consider it obsessional when Labour Members or, indeed, Conservative Members have for many years campaigned against, and taken action to rectify, the disgraceful condition of many parts of private sector rented accommodation. A large part of public sector housing, at least until recent years, has been provided to replace such rotten accommodation. One could argue in detail at great length about the economic, social and legislative factors which have given rise to that position, but there is nothing obsessional about campaigning against it and taking effective action to do something about it. That introduces the role of housing associations, housing trusts and local authorities.
  For all the justifiable criticism of particular aspects of public sector housing, in general we need have no shame about what we have achieved. On the contrary, we should be proud of what we have done over half a century or more in public sector housing. Many countries throughout the world, including some advanced industrial countries, wish that they could have followed the same road, in one way or another, to deal with their housing problems.
  There are further aspects to the argument about sales. The Housing Act 1980 was wrong to compel the indiscriminate sale of thousands of rented dwellings. It led, without our knowing that would be the result, to a significant reduction in the total rented sector. If we continue down this road, we shall have a financial loss. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) has said that it may be developing already. All the experts on housing put this argument in 1980 and earlier. The evidence, as briefly referred to by my hon. Friend, points more and more in that direction.
  Further, we shall have a significant loss of relet accommodation. That problem will be in addition to the difficulties surrounding new build to which we have referred on so many occasions. The report of the Select Committee on the Environment states that for every 100,000 properties that are sold, each year nearly 3,000 relets that would have been made available to those in housing need will, as a consequence, not be made available. I think that the statistic was 2,600. It was between 2,500 and 3,000 a year. At one stage in ihe argument that factor was discounted. In Committee and in the House the Minister suggested that the effect on relets would be minimal, and that that would be so for 30 to 35 years. However, it became clear, following further exchanges, that for every 100,000 properties sold between 2,500 and 3,000 vacancies each year, will no longer be available to be let to those in greatest need.
  If we continue along this road, we shall not bring an end to the divisive society. We are all concerned about massive estates, but if they are broken up, in the best sense of the term, they will not benefit. The signs are that these estates will be reinforced in their isolation. They will become separated even further from the more attractive housing that we have provided for the most part in the local authority sector.
  There will be an end to divisiveness if we accept that the argument is not about the right to buy. The Labour Governments of 1964–70 and 1974–79 gave authority to local authorities to negotiate, if they wished, the sale of some of their properties. There has been no argument about that authority. Some might have engaged in it, but

  743
  they were arguing about basic policy that was accepted and applied by previous Governments and their predecessors without a major dispute.
  The argument arises when there is compulsion on local authorities to sell, irrespective of their judgment, irrespective of their examination of the needs of their area and irrespective of whether they will lose vacancies as a result of selling. The Labour Party need have no fears about the argument of pro and anti owner-occupation. It is a worn-out argument. The local community in my constituency has not bothered with it for years. It knows where I stand and where my party stands and where we have stood over many years.
  It is wrong to play politics with these issues, which is what the Bill is doing. I accept that we need legislation to deal with building regulations, but I am not happy about the way in which the Bill tackles the problem. In the runup to a possible general election, which may take place in a short while, the Government have decided to have another little game with housing. This is political dressage.
  The Bill has nothing to do with real housing needs in our cities and throughout the country generally. The Government are prepared to continue to play games with housing instead of getting down to the job that should concern them. They should be engaged in examining real needs and trying to meet them. They should be encouraging local authorities and housing associations to meet them. The Government have signally failed to do so for the past three years and they have shown no sign that they will get out of the present mess this side of the election. I hope and believe that the British people will not be fooled once more.
  6.5 pm
  Mr. Michael Latham: The right hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Freeson) speaks with immense experience and knowledge of housing. He was Minister with responsibilities for housing for longer than anyone else. Obviously we always listen to him with care. I am tempted to take up many of his remarks on work load and sales but it is not to those topics that I wish to direct my remarks.
  However, on work load, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his Departmental colleagues have been urging local authorities to spend their capital receipts. Especial emphasis has been placed on improvement work. The need to proceed with it has been urged by myself and by many others on both sides of the House. There is a great deal to be done on improvement work. There are over 1 million houses in Britain without internal WCs and that is scandalous. Local authorities should be getting on with the issuing of improvement and repair grants. My right hon. and hon. Friends have an excellent record in improving the level of grants, strengthening the relevant legislation and widening the scope of it. They have nothing to be ashamed of in this regard.
  I wish to speak about parts II and III of the Bill and in so doing I remind the House of my interest in the building industry, currently as a director of a house building company and previously as the director of the House Builders' Federation. I declare that interest, as always, but it is of loose relevance only to the Bill.
  744
  First, I shall try to put my right hon. Friend's radical new proposals in their wider context. We are dealing with a vital issue that goes to the heart of building, which is how to stop buildings falling down. When my right hon. Friend took office there were quite a few nasties lurking in the undergrowth. I am not talking about the former Government. Perhaps it will be salutary to recall some of them. It is right to say that they all arose under the existing building control system. That needs to be said because of to remarks made by the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) while speaking from the Opposition Front Bench.
  First, there was Ronan Point, which fell down in 1968. Four people were killed and umpteen millions of pounds had to be spent to strengthen tower blocks throughout the country. The inquiry found an inherent design failure, inadequate building regulation and an unsatisfactory code of practice.
  There was the tragic and dreadful incident at Summerlands with 50 deaths and further amendments to the building regulations. High alumina cement was another cause of concern. Its structural use had been controlled by the French Government as long ago as 1928 and again in 1935. It had been banned in Bavaria in 1962 but no adequate action was taken in the United Kingdom until 1975.
  There was the lowering of U-values in 1974–75, and subsequently, which has produced a most disturbing gap between the technology of eliminating heat loss and the threat of damp penetration. We still do not know enough about the long-term effects of some materials used in domestic insulation.
  Further, there were the polyurethane ceilings which the Greater London Council took out of buildings at Thamesmead and elsewhere. There was the woodwool slabs affair at New Malden. There have been great problems and heartaches over the use of calcium chloride. There was the "Clasp" system fire at Fairfield in Nottinghamshire. These are only some of the more highly publicised cases of building failures and disasters.
  The mechanism of public sector control which my right hon. Friend inherited was basically fourfold. There were the building regulations that were supervised by building control officers. It was a long-standing and extremely reputable system, but it was open to criticism from architects and others that the regulations were virtually incomprehensible. Criticism was frequently made and widely reported in the trade press.
  There was the Building Research Establishment, which was famous throughout the world. However, there was low morale as a result of a series of staff cuts, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. The Building Research Establishment experienced a frequent change of sponsoring Ministers and the introduction of a bureaucratic nightmare of committees and departmental working parties, which sprang from the Rothschild principle of commissioned research. There was also the Agrément Board, which was virtually dying on its feet in 1979 and which the independent Bennett committee had recommended merging with the British Standards Institution. Finally, there was the National Building Agency, which had long ceased to have much connection with its original job of appraising industrialised building systems. It had become, in effect, a private consultancy firm with a substantial public sector work load.

  745
  The NBA has since been scrapped, along with the housing development directorate of the Department of the Environment, the Environmental Board and the Department of the Environment directorate of research. All those bodies had diffuse concern or had responsibility for study and research into building or design problems. May I say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I remember you and I discussing the matter at about four o'clock in the morning on two separate occasions when you had ministerial responsibility for such matters.
  There were also the legal nasties to which my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman) referred. Looming over all was the problem of liability. The decisions of the courts in Dutton v. Bognor Regis urban district council, Anns v. Merton and others—coupled with the Defective Premises Act 1972—seem to imply a total and unlimited liability on local authorities and their building control officers. No wonder some of them ran for cover and builders began to complain of a slow and defensive attitude from the building control machinery.
  The response that I favoured was to try to deal with all those problems at once. I argued two years ago that Ministers should merge the Building Research Establishment and the Agrément Board into a construction industry testing authority. I envisaged a public, statutory agency. It would become mandatory for a new component or product coming on to the market to receive a testing certificate from the agency, or from private laboratories working under contract to the agency. If the product received a certificate, it would automatically be deemed to satisfy the building regulations. The cost of the testing would be met by fees and, since the process would be mandatory—the Agrément process is not—it would be self-financing. Liability for failures would fall on the manufacturer, designer or contractor, as appropriate, subject to a 10-year limit. Liability would lie against CITA only if the agency had failed to test properly the new product or had otherwise acted in a negligent or incompetent manner.
  My proposals were not acceptable to Ministers. That was fair enough, as they have responsibility for decisions and I do not. Instead, they reprieved the Agrément Board, but they left the system of submission of products as voluntary. The Building Research Establishment was to be given a new independent management board and was also to have the assistance of an EDC for the building industry research strategy committee. There was, alas, a serious muddle over the hasty introduction of fees for building regulations consent. The first regulations in 1980 were a complete mess, but the 1982 revisions were better.
  My right hon. Friend also decided that the nettle of building controls should be grasped differently. Whereas I wanted a national organisation whose certificates would be deemed to satisfy the regulations, Ministers chose a more flexible option—a combination of private certification and a drastic revision of the regulations. In that respect, the Bill closely follows the consultative paper which was itself a development of last year's White Paper and of a major speech of the Secretary of State to the National House Building Council in December 1979.
  The issues have been well argued in the industry, although some of the details remain obscure. The Bill, of course, leaves all the vital questions to the regulations. We are not told how a person is to achieve the status of approved inspector, nor what requirements will be made
  746
  for insurance. Nor do we know for how long the insurance period must last, or whether it will be an insurance of the building, an indemnity insurance of the inspector or both at the same time. The only thing we do know, which is essential, is that if the private certificate option is used there can be no question of the local authority retaining liability. The same is true of the new system of self-certification for other public sector bodies. That is quite right. The new system would be ludicrous if the local authority retained responsibility in such circumstances.
  Some may say—the hon. Member for Bolton, West said it—that until these issues are resolved we cannot evaluate the Minister's proposals properly. There is some truth in that criticism, but I shall put forward some criteria against which we could judge the Bill in practice. Membership of a professional institution should not of itself be a sufficient qualification. There must be a separate vetting procedure for private sector inspectors, which should be carried out by the institutions, as the consultation paper said. It should, arguably, involve further academic qualifications that relate specifically to structural and engineering matters, and there must be much practical experience.
  Secondly, self-certification by an architect, engineer or surveyor who is in the direct employ of the developer rather than acting as an independent consultant, is unlikely to command public confidence. The inspector must be at arm's length.
  Thirdly, sub-certification cannot be acceptable unless there is an overall inspector who is plainly and directly responsible for the whole operation.
  Fourthly, part certification, which is permitted in the consultation document, is undesirable. If the developer cannot find approved inspectors who can do the entire job, it would be better to leave it to the local authority and avoid duplication of effort and confusion of responsibility.
  If liability is to fall personally on the certifier, he would become responsible for a defined period for buildings that he had not designed or built but only inspected. That suggests that it would be better to follow the French system and insure the building, which means in practice the architect and the contractor. Any liability against the certifier could be limited only to negligent inspection, and it must be time-limited. The Bill should also contain a time limit for local authority inspection. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will take on board the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet. We must deal with that matter now.
  The new building regulations are a brave attempt by the Minister. This technical issue cannot be examined properly on Second Reading and must await examination in Committee. Suffice to say now that the new "approved documents" do grasp the nettle of "deeming to satisfy" the building regulations, but they are not entirely satisfactory as a defence. They will not be subject to parliamentary control, as part of the trade-off in the new system of differentiating between the general proposals, which Parliament will approve, and the detailed, non-statutory back-up. That will present a fundamental dilemma to the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments and it is a matter of considerable controversy in the industry. We must have much more public discussion before final decisions are made.
  I welcome with wry amusement clause 39, which repeals the Building Control Act 1966. That Act was a flop from the start. It destroyed the ministerial career of the late

  747
  Charles Pannell, a man who was very popular in the House, and it has been inoperative since 1968. During its passage through the House, I had a modest role to play in the Conservative Research Department, when I advised my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts, my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Sir A. Costain) and Sir Robin Chichester-Clark. I am glad to be in at the kill 16 years later.
  Parts II and III of the Bill are not politically exciting and are unlikely to win or lose votes, but they are of immense importance to the construction industry and its allied professions. I congratulate sincerely my right hon. Friend on his determination to bring them forward, but the issue of preventing building failures remains. I hope that the Minister will ensure that both the Building Research Establishment and the Agrément Board give single-minded and constant attention to the need for efficient testing to avoid some of the horrors and disasters that we have experienced in past years. There is still much to be done in that regard.
  6.19 pm
  Mr. Stephen Ross: It is a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Melton (Mr. Latham), whose contribution once again showed his great professional abilities. I am sure that we shall all read it several times in the Official Report. I certainly hope that the hon. Gentleman will be serving on the Standing Committee, as there is much work to be done and he raised some highly pertinent questions. I hope that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman) will also be a member of the Committee, as he, too, made a most valuable contribution.
  My contribution, which will be considerably less learned than that of the hon. Member for Melton, will deal mainly with part I of the Bill. Although parts II and III are important, I think that most people will regard part I as containing the main proposals, which I view with great concern.
  The true nature of what is about to hit them is only just dawning on many charitable housing associations. When I saw the outline of the Bill, I did not believe that it would apply to the housing association that I helped to found. I now find that it will apply absolutely and entirely. I therefore declare an interest as a founder member of the Isle of Wight housing association. I am no longer on the management committee and hold only a £1 share, but clearly I take a great interest in its development. I have also been a member of a London housing association. I should perhaps declare a further interest as I am still a fully paid-up member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, although I hasten to add that my qualifications were in agriculture and had nothing to do with building surveying.
  The Isle of Wight housing association, which has been a great success, dates back to 1972–73 when there was an enormous increase in house prices. At that time, I was associated with a village church and Portsmouth diocesan board was saying that the land surrounding the rectory would have to be sold for executive-type homes. We rebelled against that on the grounds that if the land had to be disposed of it should at least be sold to build houses that would be available to the local people. There was a dire shortage of building land, no new houses were being built,
  748
  the average age of the population was continually rising and the younger generation were leaving the area. I shall not bore the House with the details of the battle, but ultimately a very red-faced archdeacon suggested to me that we should form a housing association and I replied, "We shall."
  A local builder, Miles Clarke, joined me in the project. I put his name on record as he gave five years of unpaid and unstinting work to get the association off the ground. Week after week, he gave many hours of his time without any payment. He never built a house for the association. He ensured that his involvement was entirely separate from his building activities. If anyone deserves to be rewarded in the Honours List, it is he. I left him holding most of the responsibility. When we formed that association, we put our own money into it. Admittedly, it was not a great deal—several hundred pounds—and some came from Church sources. Nevertheless, we put our own money into it and in forming the association we examined various similar bodies, particularly in the Portsmouth area.
  I am delighted to say that the Isle of Wight housing association has developed to such an extent that it now manages between 300 and 400 properties. Some were taken over from other associations, but most are converted stock or properties that have been built since 1974. It is a joy for me to visit the association. Indeed, I visited the management office only last Friday. At the request of the parish council, we deliberately built 40 or 50 housing units on glebe land in the centre of the village in a rural part of the Isle of Wight because we wanted to bring young people and families back to the village. Only the other day, I took part in a discussion about how a doctor's surgery could be brought to the area.
  What will happen if the Bill is passed and that association is forced to sell recently completed properties at discounts of 35 per cent. and more? The people involved will decide to buy—perfectly sensibly, as it is a gift to them. They will then sell the properties and the process that we sought to arrest will begin all over again. The houses will become second homes or they will be occupied by retired people. The younger people will thus be forced to leave the area, the average age will rise again and the village will stagnate. As the National Federation of Housing Associations has said, the same will happen in the inner cities. Fat profits will be made on such sales and no one can blame the tenants for taking advantage of that chance.
  I have just had to buy my own flat on a long lease, with repayments of about £400 per month, which I find rather harsh and cannot really afford. How some people are buying the properties that they are currently purchasing, I do not know. I believe that many of them must be in great difficulties with repayments. If the banks and building societies are not pressing them too hard, this may not yet have shown up, but I believe that in the next year or two there will be a large number of repossessions because people cannot meet their mortgage obligations.
  It is not true that when the housing association tenants took occupation they did not know their position in relation to the right to buy. The first article of the Isle of Wight housing association tenants' charter concerns the right to buy and it is made clear that tenants of the association, which has charitable status and is registered as a charity, do not have the right to buy that secure tenants of non-charitable associations now have under the 1980 Act. A copy of that document was given to all tenants

  749
  moving in as well as those who had recently taken occupation. The Secretary of State now says that he has received a large number of letters from housing association tenants who wish to buy, but they knew the terms when they took occupation.
  As the NFHA says, housing associations are controlled by volunteers. Even when a committee employs expert staff, its members give endless hours of their own time to help those in severe housing need. That donation of time to meet the needs of others is not acknowledged in the Bill. People have put in many years of voluntary service to secure decent homes for the disadvantaged and they deeply resent the proposal that some of the more fortunate tenants should now take those homes permanently out of the reach of the less well-off. I say "Hear, hear" to that. That is what I find so distressing about the Bill.
  In conclusion, I accept that anomalies have arisen under the 1980 Act. For instance, the position of local authority homes on long leasehold and unacceptable service charges should perhaps be dealt with. Charitable housing associations, however, were set up by amateurs—ordinary people who were greatly concerned at the shortage of accommodation for their children and their friends' children and wished to help to solve the problem. Those people have given up vast amounts of their own time and spent a great deal of their own money—only to see the results of their work sold off. That was not the object. That is why I support the Opposition view and I plead with the Government to change their mind. It is diabolical that the Government should now try to undo the work of so many people in the voluntary sector. We hear enough from the Government about the need to support voluntary effort, but they are now literally taking the ground from under those people's feet and I bitterly resent that.
  6.27 pm
  Mr. J. F. Pawsey: I hope that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) will forgive me if I do not follow him too far down the road that he has signposted. I will, however, pursue him into one area. He expressed concern at the amount of mortgage repayment that his constituents were likely to make. I am sure, therefore, that he will join me in applauding the Government's economic policies, which have resulted in a fall in interest rates and a fall in the amount of mortgage payments being made.
  The right hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Freeson) made a forceful speech. He said that the number of houses available to rent was the lowest in 50 years. I understand his genuine concern about that, having served with him on the Select Committee on the Environment. It is fair to say, however, that if the right to buy had not existed many of the people who exercised that right would have remained tenants for ever. There is no real reduction in the housing stock.
  Mr. Freeson: However one views the rightness or wrongness of this, until recently one sector of rented housing was losing about 100,000 properties per year, which was made good by the construction of at least that number in the public sector. Today, however, more than 200,000—almost a quarter of a million—rented dwellings in the private and public sectors are being lost every year, but only 30,000 to 35,000 are being built. Therefore, there is a major reduction and in 10 years' time hundreds of thousands fewer properties will be available for rent than would otherwise have been the case.
  Mr. Pawsey: The right hon. Gentleman might care to reflect on the fact that if the Opposition had not been so dogmatic we might have seen many more private landlords in existence. Legislation introduced by the Opposition has almost driven private landlords into extinction and that is part of the problem that we face at present.
  I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on an imaginative Bill. I am sure that the House will share my opinion. It is another excellent runner from the Heseltine-Stanley stable, and I do not doubt that it will prove to be another winner. The Government are rightly firmly committed to the principle of council house sales and the Bill merely takes us further down that road. It brings certain housing associations into the right-to-buy legislation. I know that there are many tenants of housing associations within my constituency who wish to purchase their homes. I have here a folder containing about 166 letters that have passed between me, my right hon. Friends, the Leicester housing association and my constituents. I have been arguing the case for house sales for over 18 months with that housing association, but despite my best endeavours not a single house has so far been sold.
  Mr. Graham: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Pawsey: I hear the hon. Gentleman agreeing. I trust that my constituents will also hear that clear expression of opinion. It is disgraceful that housing associations should be able to flout the declared wishes of the House when it passed legislation about two years ago.
  I am aware that the Housing Act 1980 gives my right hon. Friend the power to intervene in cases where tenants have experienced difficulty in exercising the right to buy. When the Minister winds up I should like to hear how many times that right has been exercised and how soon thereafter tenants purchased the houses which were the subject of intervention.
  The sale of houses in the ownership of local councils has done much to broaden the base of home ownership. At least 350,000 houses have now been sold. Tenants have expressed their clear desire to own their own home. Why should they be deprived of that right? A major criticism of the Opposition is that they intend to repeal the relevant legislation. I believe that to be both dogmatic and spiteful. No doubt it will be a major contributory factor to their losing the next general election. The council house and rent-paying public have expressed 350,000 times their belief that the present legislation is both necessary and desirable. This legislation will further advance that case.
  If it is thought that I exaggerate, it is worth referring to "Labour's Programme 1982", which says:
  "We will relieve public landlords of any statutory obligation to sell, with effect from our first days in office."
  Mr. Graham: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Pawsey: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman says "Hear, hear". In case hon. Members should feel that that is an isolated pronouncement, I shall quote from the National Executive Committee's policy statement:
  "The Labour Government should in its first days of office make an official announcement of its intention to end enforced sales. Legislation would then follow in a matter of weeks."
  I hope that every council house tenant hears that clear and unequivocal threat to their rights. I have no doubt that they will know what to do when the appropriate time comes. It is a direct commitment by the Opposition to end council house sales.
  Mr. Graham: The hon. Gentleman is repeating a canard that has already been voiced by the Government—that there is a clear commitment to stop council house sales. That is untrue. We intend to stop the compulsory sale of council houses and to leave a willing buyer and a willing seller, as there always is with a good contract.
  Mr. Pawsey: I am delighted about that intervention from the hon. Gentleman. I should like to quote from the reference sheet that the hon. Gentleman will find in the Library. It says:
  "The Labour Opposition is vigorously opposed to the compulsory sale of council houses. 'Labour's Programme 1982' sets out Labour's policy on council house sales as follows. 'We will relieve public landlords of any statutory obligation to sell, with effect from our first days in office. Sales which have reached an advanced stage, comparable to exchange of contracts in a private purchase, … will be allowed to proceed'."
  Not only have Opposition Members noted that passage, I am certain that council house tenants will hear what has been said in this House and will appreciate who really cares about council house tenants and their rights.
  The Opposition are evidently suggesting that ordinary people cannot be trusted to look after themselves, be responsible for the roof over their heads or to have something of real value to pass on to their children. For them the State is evidently greater than the individual. They believe that council house tenants should always remain council house tenants. Once a tenant, always a tenant, is the Opposition's slogan.
  Mr. Latham: We know from experience that most Labour-controlled councils will not sell a single house unless the law gives the tenant the right to buy.
  Mr. Pawsey: I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. But official Opposition Members are not entirely alone. The Social Democratic Party apparently cannot make up its mind. It says:
  "We need to debate whether … the Right to Buy should remain a single national policy, or whether it should be up to local decision in the light of local housing needs."
  It does not reach a conclusion.
  Mr. Cartwright: The hon. Gentleman is quoting from a document that is somewhat out of date. If he quotes from the official statement, which was published in May he will find that our position is clear.
  Mr. Pawsey: The Social Democratic Party changes its policies with regular monotony. The Social Democratic Party discussion paper on housing that I referred to was published in 1981. The Social Democratic Party changes its policies so often. It clearly shows considerable indecision. It might try to get an issue of this importance right first time.
  I do not suggest that the Social Democratic Party is two-faced, but I believe that it is facing two ways. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright) is taking mote. One of the things that might come out of this debate is a clear statement of intent from the Social Democratic Party. What does it intend to do about the right to buy? Will it keep it or scrap it? Will it be more socialist than democratic tonight? Will it say unequivocally that the right to buy is right? I look forward to hearing the contribution of the hon. Member for Woolwich, East.
  The Bill does not go as far as some of us would like. The right to buy will not be available for those houses or
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  flats owned by charitable organisations before 1974, when the housing association grant was introduced. Neither will it be available where dwellings provided before 1974 have been repaired and improved subsequently with the aid of a housing association grant.
  I welcome the fact that tenants of leasehold property will have the right to purchase a long lease of up to 125 years, dependent only on the length of time that the landlord's lease still has to run, and subject only to the landlord's leasehold interest being not less than 22 years in the case of houses and 50 years in the case of flats.
  I am pleased that clause 5 renders void any attempt by unscrupulous local authority landlords to charge for the giving of the right to buy. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about private landlords?"] Private landlords are not mentioned in the Bill, for the reason already given by my right hon. Friend. It is a pity that Labour Members were not listening when my right hon. Friend spelt out the case in such comprehensive detail. Clearly, this legislation will stop an existing loophole, and it should therefore be welcome.
  Schedule 3 protects tenants against unreasonable surcharges. That has been yet another method used by obstructive authorities to prevent the implementation of the right to buy.
  Clause 17 amends the provisions governing sub-letting and the assignment of secure tenancies. I understand that certain local authorities, when agreeing to a transfer of tenancies, have made it conditional on the tenant not exercising the right to buy. That is disgraceful. It is wrong that such arrangements are made to prevent the tenant from purchasing the house into which he moves, and that is clearly contrary to the spirit of legislation passed in his House. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has incorporated the appropriate provision in the Bill.
  Part II deals with building controls, and I shall listen with considerable interest to what my hon Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction says on this point. My understanding is that this part of the Bill had its origins in 1979 when the Secretary of State addressed the National House Building Council. He expressed proper concern that the existing system of building control in England and Wales was unwieldy, bureaucratic and unnecessarily costly and, above all, that there were widely differing interpretations of the regulations—so much so that they were consistent only in their inconsistency.
  I am well aware that volume house builders such as Wimpey and Barratt can obtain an approval in one district but can receive a refusal on the same design in a neighbouring district. That is intolerable, and something must be done to resolve and simplify the situation. The proposals in the Bill will help builders. They will remove petty frustrations and help to keep costs down.
  I understand that the Secretary of State will designate certain competent persons as approved inspectors able to provide certificates of approval. Those competent persons must possess professional qualifications, practical experience and be in possession of indemnity insurance. I appreciate that this definition encompasses architects, engineers and surveyors. Such a system has immediate attractions. Despite what Labour Members have said, it will result in less bureaucracy and time-wasting and will generally speed up matters in an industry where time is literally money. It will also reduce local government expenditure.
  Evidently, however, no insurers have so far shown an interest in providing the appropriate indemnity to an

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  approved inspector. Without that safeguard, the proposed system will not work, because the approved inspector acting without insurance cover would become personally liable for any claims made against him and, at any date in the future, for any building defects that he should have prevented. That point was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman). It would be foolhardy for anyone to become an approved inspector without the appropriate insurance cover.
  Should the approved inspector have a disagreement with the builder and decide to proceed no further, he can pass responsibility to the local authority, but there seems to be no provision in the Bill for the local authority to recoup any costs involved in that work. I hope that my hon. Friend will comment on that point.
  I was a local councillor for about 21 years, and I am quite aware that at times local councils can be so bureaucratic as to be almost bloody-minded. I recognise the frustrations that are often felt by builders. But the present system has at least one principal benefit—it enjoys the confidence of the public, who recognise that local authorities are absolutely impartial and are not likely to approve a building that does not satisfy them. The present system, while undoubtedly requiring reform, at least ensures a high standard of safety.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Melton (Mr. Latham) said that there were already many serious building failures under the present system and suggested that a change in the system need not necessarily be a change for the worse. Again, I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on this point.
  It is the responsibility of the local authority to maintain a register of approved notices and certificates, but there is no reference in the Bill to a fee. Can a local authority recoup the costs involved in the maintenance of the register? Will a body be set up to authorise and supervise the approved inspectors? How large will that body be; what is it likely to cost; and how many inspectors are likely to be appointed to supervise building regulations in England and Wales?
  I welcome the fact that the Bill continues the current exemptions from building control and extends them to local authority buildings as well as to
  "Buildings of such public bodies as are answerable either locally or through Ministers to Parliament".
  I note that such bodies will be able to give such relaxation to the controls as they believe to be appropriate. I have no doubt that they will discharge that duty responsibly, and I have no doubt that that will be to the public good.
  Not surprisingly, some local authorities and professional bodies are worried about some of the provisions in parts II and III, but I am sure that those points will have already occurred to the Minister and that he will be able to reassure those local authorities and professional bodies when he winds up. I wish the Bill well and look forward to its enactment.
  6.48 pm
  Mr. David Winnick: During my remarks I shall respond to several points arising from the speech of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Pawsey). However, I do not intend to speak about the building control regulations in part II. Instead, I entirely endorse what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) and agree with the reservations expressed by some Conservative Members.
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  We should be debating a Bill to deal with the formidable housing crisis now facing us. The number of council dwellings now being built is lower than at any time since the 1920s, and there is a growing waiting list of people desperately in need of rented accommodation.
  The hon. Member for Rugby said that certain Labour Party remarks should be publicised. One of the remarks that we shall continue to publicise is that in the last two or three years council tenants have been unjustly treated and have faced rent increases of about 117 per cent., which is more than double the increase in the retail price index in the same period. I am sure that the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Pawsey) will not agree with me, but that is why the Opposition maintain and the Labour candidate in Rugby will argue that there should be a rent freeze. The forthcoming rent increase is utterly unjustified in view of what has been happening to council tenants.
  Rents have not increased so much simply to reduce the central Government subsidy, although that has been the main reason. The Minister for Housing and Construction almost boasts about another reason—the effort to encourage more and more tenants to buy their own homes. He says effectively that it is just as costly to rent as it is to buy. That is because of the exorbitant rent increases that central Government have virtually imposed during the past two or three years. Instead of taking those measures that should have been taken, we have this insignificant Bill that will do nothing to help people in housing need.
  I do not want to be uncharitable about the Secretary of State, but no Secretary of State in any post-war Government has done as much harm to housing as the present one. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Freeson) said, he has done his utmost substantially to reduce the number of available rented dwellings. The properties that are now being sold off to tenants are not being replaced. We are experiencing the lowest number of council house starts since the 1920s. Not content with the harm that is undoubtedly being done to the rented sector, Ministers have now decided that the charitable housing groups—which were originally excluded from the earlier legislation—must take their turn.
  Ministers and Conservative Members maintain—the hon. Member for Rugby has just done so—that a major principle is involved. That principle is the sitting tenant's right to buy. They seem to want us to believe that that is one of the most important principles in housing. The question that must inevitably follow, and which I asked the Secretary of State, is why, if there is such a principle and if it is so important for sitting tenants to buy, should private tenants be excluded? Surely they, too, should enjoy the right to buy. Needless to say, there is no mention of private tenants in the present legislation.
  Mr. Arthur Johnston, the chairman of the Federation of Private Residents' Associations, in a letter to The Times that appeared on Saturday, wrote:
  "There are thousands of private tenants, particularly in inner London, who would welcome the opportunity to purchase their flats … Why should private tenants not have the same rights as council tenants?"
  That is an interesting question.
  It should also be borne in mind that the council dwellings that are being sold off are those that the Select Committee on the Environment, of which the hon. Member for Rugby was briefly a member, warned about in its report last year. It said—this should come as no surprise—that the type of council dwellings that are likely

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  to be sold off are those with gardens in the better areas. In the main, there has been no queue of tenants of multi-storey flats wanting to purchase. Only the better council housing stock has been sold off. All the evidence points in that direction.
  I should be interested to know how many flats have been sold to council tenants. Leaving aside those who could not buy, I imagine that it is very few. Most of those who can buy have already done so. Many of those who see or write to us about housing problems are council tenants. Their problem is not so much that they cannot buy, as that they want to transfer to houses with gardens. It must be obvious that if one sells off the better council housing stock and it is not replaced—we know about the low level of council house starts—people living in multi-storey flats who have children and who may be desperate to move into houses with gardens must wait much longer.
  Mr. Peter Bottomley: If the hon. Gentleman's argument is true that people do not wish to buy flats and that if a council were happy to sell them people would not move in, how does he explain why Greenwich council, which is in my constituency, refused to sell flats for many months, although it agreed to sell houses?
  Mr. Winnick: Irrespective of what might have been happening in Greenwich, it is true nationally that very few tenants of flats have wanted to buy them. Perhaps the Minister could tell me how many of the properties which have been sold as a result of the 1980 legislation have been houses, how many have been flats and, especially, how many have been in multi-storey blocks. Few tenants who live on the eighth or twelfth floor of a multi-storey block of flats have any desire to buy their flats, even if they were able to do so, and there were no legal difficulties in doing so.
  About 80,000 tenanted houses owned by charitable housing associations are affected by the Bill. It is important not to overlook the fact that the Government are forcing independent organisations to carry out policies against their wishes. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West made that point. When discussing centralised Government and control, that is a good illustration of a Government who seem to be insensitive to the wishes of the affected housing groups. Many of those charitable housing groups have existed for a long time. As one would expect, most of those organisations have simply provided accommodation for today's housing victims. But they are also concerned with tomorrow's homeless. They provide accommodation for those who cannot find local authority accommodation and are unable to buy their own homes.
  Neither the Minister nor any of his hon. Friends told us which housing associations and charitable organisations support the Bill. I have heard of none. Surely it is understandable that they should be allowed to continue to conduct their affairs properly. They do not want to be forced by the Government to do something that they believe is not right. It is as simple as that. Once dwellings are sold off to tenants, they are gone for good.
  The Caldmore housing association is in my borough. It is a community-based housing association that offers homes to those in need, including single parents, the unemployed, battered women and their children and ethnic
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  minorities. It has approximately 770 properties. Because of difficulties arising from cuts in public spending and because of local housing need and other factors, the association has had to close its waiting list. It has 400 people on that list. The director wrote to me as follows:
  "If Housing Associations are now to lose properties through sales, how will the growing army of people without choice ever find homes to rent? Whatever else is said, the fact remains that demand for rented accommodation continues to grow."
  It is understandable that such a genuine charitable housing association that has operated for some time feels threatened, especially as the Bill will mainly affect properties built since 1974.
  It has been argued that the Labour Party is somehow opposed to owner-occupation. That is far from true. It was a Labour Government who, in the 1960s, introduced the option mortgage scheme which has enabled many people to become owner-occupiers. Other Labour Government schemes have also enabled people to become owner-occupiers. I do not know why the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) shakes his head. The hon. Gentleman will not deny, I am sure, that the option mortgage scheme was the creation of the Labour Government in the 1960s.
  Mr. Peter Bottomley: The hon. Gentleman argues that the option mortgage scheme is enough. It is clearly not enough. Many of my constituents who wish to buy their homes were not allowed to do so by the Greenwich council, irrespective of the existence of the option mortgage scheme.
  Mr. Winnick: The hon. Gentleman is not disagreeing with my contention that the Labour Party, far from being opposed to owner-occupation, has tried in Government to increase the numbers of owner-occupiers. We want people on ordinary incomes, if they so wish, to become owner-occupiers. There is no disagreement.
  Most hon. Members are owner-occupiers. No one who wishes to become an owner-occupier should be excluded. However, surely it is better that those who live in the public rented sector, and certainly in charitable housing association property, if they have the means to become owner-occupiers, should go into the private market and receive assistance through the option mortgage scheme or in other ways and thereby release accommodation for those in need. That is surely better than the existing tenant buying the property in which he lives and so making someone desperately in need of accommodation wait that much longer. That is the difference between the Government and the Opposition. The difference is not over owner-occupation.
  The Opposition believe that local authorities and housing associations, including charitable ones, should have the choice of deciding how they pursue their policy. The Government have forced compulsory sales upon local authorities. Now they are applying that policy to charitable housing groups. It is surely for those organisations and groups to decide how they should proceed. This is another illustration of Government dogma. They have not listened to those in local authorities and charitable housing associations who know about housing need and housing difficulties.
  It is all very well Conservative Members being complacent over the sale of council dwellings and charitable housing association properties. There remain a large number of people whose only hope of finding

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  adequate and secure accommodation is through the local authority or a genuine housing association. They do not have the means to become owner-occupiers. In most cases, they do not wish to become owner-occupiers. Not a word about their needs has been heard from the Secretary of State or Conservative Members.
  It is shocking that in the Britain of the 1980s families should be living in squalid and difficult accommodation comprising one or two rooms. I am sure that the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) will say that the privately rented sector can provide the answers. I do not believe so. The hon. Gentleman may be right. I do not believe, however, that there is any evidence to show that the private rented sector can supply the accommodation that is so desperately needed. At the end of the day, those in desperate need can be assisted only by local authority housing or by genuine housing associations providing the necessary dwellings.
  The Government have substantially reduced the rented sector. If the Bill is approved, those in need and whose desire for accommodation is great will stay longer out in the cold without secure and proper accommodation.
  7.4 pm
  Mr. John Heddle: The hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) has stated two myths. The first is that building an increasing number of council houses will reduce the council house waiting list. History does not support that contention. The second myth is that those on council house waiting lists want the right to rent a council house. Of course, they want the right to rent, but not necessarily the right to rent from the council. They would be equally prepared to rent from the voluntary housing movement or the private sector.
  The hon. Member for Walsall, North, whose constituency adjoins mine, has made the same speech in each debate on housing since the general election in May 1979. Not once has the hon. Gentleman come up with an original or constructive solution to the housing problems. These problems are deeply embedded in the mongrel dogma of the past. The hon. Gentleman forgot to mention that his own authority has rent arrears of between £2 million and £3 million.
  Like the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross), I am a member of the board of management of a housing association, the United Kingdom housing trust. Like him, I am a consultant to a firm of chartered surveyors with a nation-wide practice. Like him, the consultancy is with a firm of valuation surveyors and not building surveyors. I have therefore no professional or material interest in part II of the Bill.
  I wish to direct my attention to part I of the Bill. The debate affords hon. Members the opportunity to put under the parliamentary microscope the policies of the other parties. I look forward with interest to hearing the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright). I imagine that he will confirm that his party is in favour of the sale of council houses in the right circumstances. I agree with him wholeheartedly. I believe that the Social Democratic Party agrees with the Conservative Party. We have adopted the philosophy over many years that the sale of council houses breaks down the "them and us" attitude on council estates. It breaks down the attitude of two nations. It breaks down the social segregation that the Government
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  inherited from the mongrel dogma of the Labour Government so excellently propounded by the hon. Member for Walsall, North.
  I hope that the hon. Member for Woolwich, East will be able to confirm that the Social Democratic Party differs in this, as it does, no doubt, in other respects, from its Liberal alliance partners. I understand that the Liberal Party is opposed to the compulsory sale of council houses. As there is no hon. Member representing the Liberal Party in the Chamber at the moment, I am unable to receive direct confirmation of that.
  One thing of which the House can be absolutely certain is that the Labour Party wishes to deny what the majority of people put above all things, which is the right to own their own home. Scratch below the surface of any Marxist or any fully paid-up member of the Militant Tendency and one will find two things. First—
  Mr. Allan Roberts: Blood.
  Mr. Heddle: Red blood—and two other things. If those people were honest, they would admit that they would love their son or daughter to win a scholarship to the local grammar school, but they are happy to troop into the polling booths at general and local elections and vote against the continuance of grammar schools. The second thing that they would love to have is the opportunity to own their own homes and to pass on the fruits of their life's labours to their children in years to come. However, at general and local elections they will troop into the polling booths and vote against that basic aim, ambition and aspiration of most working people. Therein lies the two-faced attitude of the Labour Party.
  The Labour Party was happy to put in its last general election manifesto the fact that it seeks to bring about a fundamental change in this country's wealth in favour of working people. What better way is there to bring about a redistribution of wealth than by selling council houses? By selling council houses, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. Pawsey) eloquently said, one is unlocking the wealth that is locked up in bricks and mortar, which is reinvested and redistributed to provide homes for those in genuine need—the elderly, the disabled and those who really need the right to rent.
  Mrs. Ann Taylor: The hon. Gentleman is saying that by selling council houses we are releasing new resources in order to build for those who really are in need. Will he remind the House how many council houses a local authority must sell to build just one new house? Has he read the Select Committee's evidence on that?
  Mr. Heddle: I have read the Select Committee's evidence. I am now a member of the Select Committee. As the hon. Lady knows, a large element of the cost of providing a new home is the cost of the land. One thing that the Government have done that no previous Government have done is to encourage local authorities sitting on urban derelict land, which local authority after local authority and Labour Governments have ignored in the past—the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) referred to that—to do something about the state of that land. That is the plight of the inner cities. There is urban desolation in inner cities because they have no soul. The people who live in them have no feeling of belonging or of living in a community. That is because they have no financial stake in the area in which they live.
  Mrs. Taylor: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman has said about the availability of land. I hope that he realises that when the Government force charitable housing trusts to sell prime homes in inner cities the social mix will be reduced in those areas. Will the hon. Gentleman answer the question that I asked him? How many council houses must a local authority sell to pay for one new home, taking into account all the discounts and everything else on which he says he has the information?
  Mr. Heddle: I am delighted to do so. I shall take the hon. Lady quickly through the cost—
  Mrs. Taylor: Give the figure.
  Mr. Heddle: I shall give the figure. I ask the hon. Lady to contradict me, if she chooses, from her own experience. The cost is between £12,000 and £15,000, because the Government have reduced the housing cost yardstick. They have abolished the Parker Morris standards and have enabled local authorities to build realistically on figures that will justify an economic rent.
  Mrs. Taylor: Give the figure.
  Mr. Heddle: I have just done so. One cannot equate the number of houses that must be sold to provide a new council house because each house sold depends upon the amount of discount offered, which depends on the length of time the secure tenant has been in occupation. The hon. Lady is really asking how long is a piece of string.
  I disagree with the provisions in the Bill on shared purchase. The principle of shared purchase is right, but the Bill proposes that when a local authority tenant buys under the shared purchase provisions he or she must buy first at a stake of 50 per cent. and then in tranches of 12½ per cent. I should like to ask my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction whether there could be some flexibility in that arrangement. What is the argument against one of my constituents who, for reasons of his own, wishes initially to acquire only 25 per cent. and then 12½ per cent. and another 12½ per cent. until ultimately, when his job prospects improve and he is promoted, he can acquire the full 100 per cent?
  The Bill also provides for the right of Service men to acquire their own property. At the moment the period during which someone was a member of the Armed Forces is taken into account when his entitlement to discount is calculated but not when the right to buy is established. The Bill proposes that all periods spent as a member of the Armed Forces will count for the purposes of qualifying that person for the right to buy and for discount. That will be welcome to many of my constituents serving in the Staffordshire regiment, who are stationed at the Whittington barracks in my constituency.
  I applaud the fact that the Secretary of State is taking powers in the Bill to act swiftly against any local authority that discriminates against a secure tenant who wishes to exercise his or her right to buy. Unfortunately, since the Housing Act 1980 some local authorities, mostly Labour controlled, have done their best to frustrate the wishes of decent law-abiding tenants to exercise their right to buy not only by imposing onerous conditions and unbearable service charges, to which the Bill refers, but in more subtle ways. Such local authorities push problem tenants into houses next door to those people. Repairs are delayed. The local authority says that because those people have
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  exercised the right to buy it will make life as difficult as possible by not carrying out repairs to which they are entitled.
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State acts swiftly when a tenant from, for example, Norwich or St. Helens reports to him that the local authority has taken two years to process his application to buy. I am sorry that the Bill does not give the Secretary of State greater powers, for example when a local authority takes three or four months to process a right-to-buy application or the district valuer takes three months to carry out the inspection and then a further two months to submit his valuation report to the local authority.
  My right hon. Friend should have greater powers to enable those sales to proceed at the pace at which they would proceed if they were in the hands of suitably qualified lawyers and valuers in the private sector. My hon. Friend the Minister will tell me that the Housing Act 1980 provides for local authorities to pass out the legal and professional work to the private sector. However, the Act gives the local authority the discretion to do so. If the local authority has not processed the right-to-buy application within a specific period and the district valuer has not prepared his report and valuation and if, subsequent to receiving the report and valuation, the local authority does not make an offer within a specific period, my right hon. Friend should have the power to take over that function, instruct the private sector and enable the sale to proceed swiftly.
  Mr. Norman Hogg: The hon. Gentleman appears to be saying that the officers of local authorities are acting improperly and are not fulfilling their statutory duties as laid down. That is not so. He has made an unfair attack on both assessors and the legal profession.
  Mr. Heddle: I am grateful to the hon. Member for that intervention, because he has given me the opportunity to bring to the attention of the House a case—I shall be bringing it to the attention of the House in an Adjournment debate tonight—handled recently by the local government ombudsman. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, West (Mr. Carlisle) is nodding his head, because he knows about the case to which I am about to refer, although I have not had the opportunity to remind him or my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) about it.
  There is a classic case in the files of the local government ombudsman, who was invited by a secure tenant in Mid-Bedfordshire to examine the behaviour of a local authority which took two years to process the right-to-buy application. During that time the value of the council house that the tenant wished to buy increased by £1,400. The ombudsman recommended that the local authority should reduce the price by that sum. However, because the powers of the ombudsman are so limited, the local authority chose to take no action and the secure tenant had to pay £1,400 more for the property than he would otherwise have done. I hope that that satisfactorily answers the point made by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Hogg).
  Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman has referred to only one case that has been referred to the local government ombudsman. That is a rather limited number of people with whom he can find fault. The hon. Gentleman instead chose to make a general attack on both assessors and on members of the legal profession employed in local

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  authorities. I am not satisfied that his argument is sustained by the example of one reference to the local government ombudsman.
  Mr. Heddle: I am not sure whether the hon. Member is seeking to pursue the point because the Opposition Benches are fairly bare or because he has a genuine interest in the matter. I am happy to acquaint the hon. Gentleman with two further cases. One is set out in a letter from Mrs. P. M. Garrett of 2 Christchurch Gardens, Lichfield, dated 11 November. It reads as follows:
  "Dear Mr. Heddle,
  Reference to the purchase of our council house, the District Valuer called on Monday October 18th, we have still not received a value."
  That was five weeks ago.
  "I know we are not the only tenants hoping to purchase but four full weeks have passed.
  Contrary to Mr. Meehan's belief in his letter to you dated 13th October"—
  Mr. Meehan acts for the local authority in question—
  "we were not immediately telephoned … the only call we received was in answer to my own call to them to find out if Mr. Meehan had received my letter which was posted two full weeks previous.
  We would like to thank you for the interest you have shown in our problem."
  If the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East would like me to bring to his notice a further instance, I refer to the case of my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. K. M. Brough. Their right-to-buy application was received by their Labour-controlled local authority on 31 March 1981. The right to buy was accepted by the council on 15 April 1981, two weeks later. The district valuer was instructed on 1 June—six weeks later. The local authority says that
  "the reason for the dalay between acknowledging the right to buy and instructing the District Valuer was due to the volume of applications being dealt with at that time."
  Had the local authority passed the work to the private sector, the application could probably have been dealt with by return of post.
  The district valuer's report was received on 5 August, nine weeks afer receiving the instruction. The local authority said:
  "You will recall that the District Valuer had similar problems in dealing with the volume of applications at that time."
  On 7 October, eight weeks later, six months after the tenant first submitted his application to buy under the Housing Act 1980, a formal offer was sent to Mr. and Mrs. Brough. That is why I have asked the Minister to consider whether the Bill is a little lenient with recalcitrant local authorities, and whether further teeth can be given to the Bill to ensure that ordinary working people and their families can exercise their democratic rights with expedition and not be frustrated by local authorities which are, like the hon. Member for Walsall, North, opposed wholeheartedly, root and branch, to the principle of extending wealth as far and as broadly as possible to as many working people and their families as possible.
  A number of local authorities, when they have allowed their tenants to exercise their right to buy, have offered the tenants mortgage finance. Interest rates have fallen far and encouragingly in the past few months and are, we think, set to fall still further. However, tenants who have taken advantage of local authority mortgages are now paying 2½ per cent. more than they would if they had taken out a mortgage with a building society.
  On a mortgage of £15,000 over 25 years, that means that the local authority mortgagor is paying £21 a month
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  more than he would if he had taken out his mortgage with a building society. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my right hon. Friend the Minister are doing all that they cart to encourage local authorities to encourage their borrowers and former tenants to transfer their mortgages to building societies, but more needs to be done.
  Much has been made of the potential that must exist in the third arm of housing—the private rented sector—to pick up and satisfy the demand that still exists and which local authorities cannot cope with. We have heard much about the plight of the homeless. It is right that the House should consider this matter seriously and responsibly. We have homeless people largely because in protecting tenants against realistic rents, successive Governments have destroyed the market for private rented property. Today, barely 3 per cent. of all houses are privately let. No one in his senses would be a landlord, because artificially low rents and excessive protection for tenants have made house letting a game that no prudent investor would become involved in.
  Shelter is the voluntary housing organisation that takes an interest in these matters. A leader in the Sunday Express says that Shelter states that
  "house-building has fallen to its lowest peacetime level since the First World War. A major reason for this is that one whole segment of housing, which represented 85 per cent. of homes before that war, has been eliminated.
  For 60 years, politicians bought votes by keeping down rents by law. Landlords could not afford to repair houses so they fell into decay and, of course, none were built to let. Now we are paying the price of politically motivated meddling with the free market."
  The Government have made significant strides since May 1979 to redress that imbalance by introducing council house sales, half and half schemes and improvement for sale, by introducing assured tenancies, shorthold tenancies, the tenants' charter and the computerised tenants' exchange scheme, by share purchase and by compelling local authorities to compile land registers to produce the land to build the homes. The Government have done more for the hopes and aspirations of more working people and their families than the Labour Government ever did. I commend the Bill to the House. It has my wholehearted support.
  7.28 pm
  Mr. Allan Roberts: I am glad to speak after the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle), because he is obviously in as great a housing wonderland as the Secretary of State. The hon. Gentleman spoke a lot of housing twaddle, as I hope to demonstrate.
  The hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth and other hon. Members have suggested that the Labour Party is in favour of the State and against the individual, because it opposes the right to buy. I cannot remember any defence of charitable housing associations in "Das Kapital". I am sure that Andropov, let alone Stalin, could not have done a better job of destroying local government democracy and freedom than the Secretary of State. I cannot understand how we are supposed to be against the individual when we attack State interference in the rights of charitable housing associations and democratically elected local authorities.
  I do not represent any housing association and I am not an adviser or consultant to any firms of architects or chartered accountants. The only interest that I have to declare is that I live in a house and represent an area in

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  which the waiting list is growing dramatically and homelessness is increasing. In inner city Bootle and Litherland not 3 per cent. or 9 per cent., but 48 per cent. of the properties are owned by private landlords. The conditions that my constituents have to suffer and the harassment and disregard of their needs by those private landlands have to be seen to be believed.
  I used to be chairman of the housing committee for the city of Manchester. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland) will mention one of the developments to which I shall refer. I had been chairman for about three weeks only when the director of housing told me that he had just received a telephone call from a lady who said that a donkey was going past her front window. I asked "What is wrong with that?" He replied "She lives on the eighth floor." I asked "What have you done about it?" He said "We sent a mental health visitor to see her. A mental health visitor from the social services department was interviewing the lady when a donkey went past the window." I asked "What is happening?" The director of housing said "The man at the end of the deck is keeping a donkey in the back room during the day and is bedding it down at night in the well of the lift shaft." I asked "What are you doing about it?" He replied "We have got the woman a transfer, and the donkey is quite happy."
  The problem is that there are no longer any houses to which to transfer people. They are all being sold. Those living in such accommodation do not want to buy, because they want to live in the very houses that the Government are forcing councils to sell. When I became the candidate for Bootle and attended my first advice bureau, my first case involved a housing problem. A woman said to me "I've got a problem." I said "What is it?" She said "It's about my roof." I asked her "What's wrong with it?" She said "I want one." That is the crux of the matter. She did not say that she wanted to buy a house or that she wanted share ownership. She said that she wanted not an assured tenancy, but a roof. The Government's proposals do not provide one extra roof. It is Government by housing gimmick.
  The Government's proposals are unbelievable—for example, shared ownership. If someone cannot afford to buy his house, he is supposed to buy part of it—first the lavatory, and then the kitchen. It seems to be suggested that someone should buy half the house, pay a mortgage and rent the other half. However, there is a catch. The person who buys one half will not get repairs done on the other half. If he buys the front door, the council will not paint the back door. If he buys the back door, it will not paint the front door.
  Have hon. Members ever tried to sell half a house? Sometimes people may want to move suddenly—for example, because of a death in the family. Have hon. Members ever tried to get a transfer out of half a house? Shared ownership schemes will not work, because they cannot work. It is the worst type of gimmick.
  The Housing Act 1980 is amazing. For the purpose of buying a council house jointly with members of a family it defines "a family". Under that Act, a tenant can join as many as three members of his family to buy the house. They are entitled, in law, to a joint mortgage. It is amazing
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  how far the Government will go to ensure that the public rented sector is destroyed and that the best houses are sold. The Government define "family" in that Act as follows:
  "A person is a member of another's family within the meaning of this Chapter if he is his spouse, parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece; treating—

  (a) any relationship by marriage as a relationship by blood, any relationship of the half blood as a relationship of the whole blood and the stepchild of any person as his child; and

  (b) an illegitimate person as the legitimate child of his mother and reputed father or if they live together as husband and wife."

  The provision includes everybody except the goldfish and the budgie. It should be sent to the Home Secretary and enshrined in immigration legislation. However, the Government have double standards.
  Can hon. Members imagine applying to buy half a house under the Bill? Let us imagine that one tenant, with three members of his family, buys half the house. Let us also imagine that he is the tenant of one half of the house and that three members of the family own the other half of the house. The tenant may have a row with one of the other members of his family. Does he have a right to ask that member to leave the half of which he is the tenant, which is rented? There is a legal and bureaucratic quagmire. Housing departments, already overworked because of Government-imposed staff cuts, will have to deal with such problems.
  Perhaps I can draw a picture of a Department of the Environment shop run by the Conservatives. It will have advertisements saying "10, 20 or 50 per cent. off. Closing down sale." The Government are approaching a general election and they are offering give-away goodies. They are trying to force charitable housing associations to sell their houses to sitting tenants. What the Government are doing to the housing association movement is a scandal. We are witnessing the enforced sale of housing association properties.
  I have an example from my area of the type of thing that happens when organisations that are set up as charitable bodies to build for rent for those in need are forced or cajoled to carry out a function for which they were not designed. I refer to selling houses to sitting tenants, building houses for sale and becoming involved in equity sharing schemes.
  Merseyside Improved Houses has become involved in building prestige flats. There is growing concern whether MIH will be able to sell the prestige flats that it has been building in the past year in Formby, next to my constituency. Sefton, the local authority that covers my constituency, has loaned MIH over £750,000 to build the luxury block of flats. The flats in Formby are situated in Witchard Lane and consist of 28 two-bedroomed flats. The money has been lent from the capital receipts account of Sefton council. The council has kept that money from the sale of land and council houses. It hopes that the loan will be repaid when the association has sold the leases on those flats to those over retirement age.
  I am referring to a charitable housing association that is supposed to be meeting need. The publicity by Ball and Percival, the estate agents handling the sale, shows that the leases are being sold at an average price of over £25,500, with public money contributing to that sale. The brochure states that the total cost of the scheme has been reduced by a Government grant of 30 per cent. Each flat is

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  therefore being offered at 30 per cent. less than the cost of construction. It seems incredible that other developers are able to build flats more cheaply and still make a profit.
  Leasehold schemes for the elderly are part of the Government's project to provide accommodation for those of retirement age. At those prices, it is certainly not accommodation for those in need. It is claimed that accommodation will be provided for those with limited financial resources who will benefit from selling a house that has become too large and expensive to maintain. The Government subsidy of 30 per cent. was meant to bring the cost of the flats to below 30 per cent. of the market value of similar accommodation in the area and therefore to provide decent accommodation for those who would otherwise be unable to afford it. That patently has not happened.
  In addition to the cost of purchasing the lease, residents will be required to pay £250 each towards a sinking fund for future capital expenditure and will be required to pay the association in excess of £30 a month for running costs. Anyone who knows about the prices of property in Formby will know that £25,000 is high, even by Formby standards, and this figure is 30 per cent. less than the actual building cost. It is clear, therefore, that the cost of building each of these flats is in excess of £34,000.
  A number of questions should be asked, let alone why a housing association set up to acquire, build and improve houses for rent got involved in the first place. First, will Merseyside Improved Houses be able to resell the flats and repay the money that it borrowed from Sefton ratepayers? It looks doubtful at the moment. Secondly, what is happening to the £60,000 that the association received from a London-based charity towards the cost of this scheme? Perhaps the Minister will say something about charitable moneys going towards schemes where compulsory sales are involved. Thirdly, why has it cost Merseyside Improved Houses so much to build these flats when other flats are being sold by builders in the area for less than MIH is charging, even with its 30 per cent. Government grant? Fourthly, why did Sefton council and MIH go ahead when they were told, even by the housing corporation, that the scheme was not vital? Was it pressure from the Government to become involved in such schemes because money was not being provided for building to rent?
  That is just one example of how things get out of hand when charitable housing associations get involved in matters for which they were not intended. That is what the Bill will do to housing associations throughout the country. All that housing associations have been forced, against their will, to do by the Government will rebound in many areas on the housing associations and on the Government.
  I believe that to some extent the housing association movement, charitable or otherwise, is part of the public rented sector, because 74 have received grants. The next Labour Government will have a duty to expand the movement's role in the traditional direction for which it was set up—the provision of accommodation to rent. To that end, the housing association movement needs to be democratised. It should be made more accountable by legislation to the tenants who rent from the housing associations and the people of the areas in which housing associations are active. Many of these housing associations are becoming large. That may be one reason for the Government's desire to force them to sell. For
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  example, the MIH is bigger now than some of the local authorities—both in the money that it spends and in its housing activity in Merseyside. It operates in almost every district council area in Merseyside. Therefore, we need to legislate to democratise the housing association movement.
  The Merseyside Improved Houses committee is a self-perpetuating oligarchy. It is not elected. Tenants have no say in who serves on it. When housing associations get large without any accountability, they become involved in unacceptable and undesirable activities.
  Merseyside Improved Houses recently purchased Nos. 51 and 53 Merton Road, Bootle, from Sefton council. It plans to use the two houses to provide office accommodation for its staff in Bootle. The council sold the building to MIH for £50,000. At present the Bootle office of MIH is in Hawthorn Road, where about 20 members of staff are accommodated in extremely comfortable, fully carpeted, centrally-heated surroundings. It has spent more that £60,000 on the existing offices in Hawthorn Road during the past five years. The move to the new offices in Merton Road is part of a trend. The association has now spent more than £250,000 on its offices in Liverpool, Birkenhead and St. Helens during the past three years. When completed, its Bootle offices in Merton Road are expected to have cost more than £150,000—£50,000 to buy the properties and £100,000 to convert them into office accommodation.
  Money for improving houses in the Bootle area is limited. Therefore, it is time that this aspect of the association's spending was fully investigated. What is wrong with the offices in Hawthorn Road? I go there regularly. Nothing seems to be wrong with them. How can MIH justify spending £100,000 on two houses in Merton Road, which the district valuer valued at £50,000? Will the district valuer say that the property is worth £150,000 when it is complete? I doubt that. Has MIH received Government permission to spend that money? Would not the money be better spent on Hartford Road, Field Road and the housing action areas in my constituency where MIH says that it cannot improve houses because of lack of funds? That is one example of what happens when a housing association gets large without accountability.
  I am a great believer in the housing association movement and the Housing Corporation being used to ensure that houses are built for rent for people in need in areas where local authorities such as Sefton—usually Conservative-controlled—refuse to build council houses to meet the needs of those on the ever-growing waiting lists. It is because of my desire to see the housing association movement accepted by the Labour Party as an instrument of expansion of its housing programme after the next election that I have raised the subject of MIH, which in the past had a good reputation for acquiring and building properties to rent. I hope that it will get back on the right lines, and that it will not listen to the Government's pleas and blackmail to follow paths that are not part of its traditional role.
  The Bill is part of a total Government strategy on housing. That was given away by the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth when he talked about the private rented sector and the need for it to be revitalised. The 1980 Act was not a tenant's charter; it was a landlord's charter. It was legislation to weaken Labour Government Rent Acts, to get rid of security of tenure in subtle ways, and to allow landlords to charge more for the properties that

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  they are renting to tenants. It was an attempt to revitalise the private rented sector. However, one can only revitalise the private rented sector by making people dependent on the private landlord, and people will be dependent on the private landlord only if they cannot gain access to one of the other sectors. So part of the strategy of pushing people on the market and depending on the private landlord is to destroy the public rented sector.
  Mr. Heddle: As the hon. Gentleman referred to my speech, I want to ask him one question. When he talks about the private rented sector, does he agree that there is a role for a third arm? Those were the words that I used. Does he agree that there is a role for the building society movement? The 1980 Housing Act gave that movement the ability to provide homes to let, particularly in inner cities and dockland areas. The Abbey National building society, the Woolwich Equitable, and one or two others have done so.
  Mr. Roberts: I am not aware of any private developers, building societies, or anyone else coming into inner city areas and building without a subsidy, direct or indirect, from local or central Government. In inner Liverpool, the land is being virtually given away to Wimpeys and Barratts. They are being subsidised to build houses for sale. Public subsidies are contributing to their profits. It is only when there are public subsidies or public intervention of some kind that the private sector comes near the inner city areas. It does not do so of its own volition.
  I do not accept that there is a role for the third arm, if the third arm is meant to be the private landlord. I rejoice in the demise of the private landlord, and I hope that it will long continue. I believe that the next Labour Government will introduce policies to municipalise the private rented sector, so that it will slowly disappear.
  An example is L. I. Reuben and Company Limited. Mr. Reuben is a large landlord. He has his offices on the third floor of Hepworth Chambers, 4 Church Street, Liverpool. He is a Rachman-type slum landlord. He lives in a mansion in Manchester, but he owns hundreds of slum properties in Merseyside, many of them in my constituency. It is scandalous that my constituents and others throughout Merseyside should suffer at the hands of this classic example of a private landlord. Mr. Reuben behaves in a fraudulent manner. He harasses tenants. He avoids his landlord's responsibilities for repair under section 32 of the Housing Act 1961, which was passed by a Conservative Government.
  Mr. Winnick: My hon. Friend may be interested to know that I know of the case purely and simply from watching television. It was interesting that when the broadcasting authorities tried to interview him, he refused. We saw a picture of him covering his face and refusing to be interviewed. He has plenty to hide.
  Mr. Roberts: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. What the television programme did not describe was the illegal nature of Mr. Reuben's activities and the contracts that he uses to con my constituents and others in housing need in Liverpool. The fact that people are dependent on such landlords shows what a shortage of accommodation there is on Merseyside and also illustrates the need for more council houses.
  Mr. Barry Porter: As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, I am well acquainted with the affairs and activities of Mr. Reuben. However, one must be fair to him. What he was doing was not illegal. He sold houses on a drip mortgage scheme to avoid an obligation as a landlord under the rent Acts. Is it not also fair to say that he has agreed to abandon that course of action as a result of pressure from Liverpool city council?
  Mr. Roberts: I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. Mr. Reuben's activities were illegal and contravened the 1961 and 1980 legislation. Nor do I accept that Mr. Reuben is keeping to certain undertakings which he gave to Liverpool city council. He seems to be continuing exactly as he did before—conning people into renting accommodation in the belief that they are buying it or will have the opportunity to buy some other property.
  As far as I am aware, Mr. Reuben advertises in the "For rent" section of the Liverpool Echo. People go along to see him and he gives them a document, a copy of which I have here. It states:
  "Unique opportunity to acquire a self-contained flat now and, if you want, a house in 18 months' time. Selected applicants will be granted early occupation of a self-contained flat on paying a deposit of £30, one calendar month's repayment, the appropriate administration fee of £12·50 and a certain amount for contribution towards property insurance. When 18 monthly payments have been made, or at any time thereafter, applicants have a choice of doing one of three things: they can return the keys, buy the flat or continue to buy it"—
  although when it comes to it they cannot—or they can move out and buy one of Mr. Reuben's houses.
  Mr. Reuben then gets the applicant to sign a contract. It is that which, unlike the television programme, I consider to be illegal. It is a contract neither to purchase nor to rent. A property can be occupied under British housing legislation only by an owner, a tenant or a licensee. This is not a licence, so it is either a contract to purchase or a contract to rent. If it is a contract to purchase, the purchaser can deal with the property as his own in law, subject only to paying the purchase price as and when the instalments are due. All the clauses here about liability for repairs, which Mr. Reuben uses as a means of getting applicants to pay more money, even making them liable on eviction, are illegal.
  If this is a rental agreement, the premium that is being sought is illegal under the Housing Act 1980. In any case, under this contract a vendor cannot in law impose conditions as to guarantors, which is what happens. If it is a contract it is defective because it refers to restrictive covenants which are not identified.
  In clause 5 of the contract a premium is again demanded under the guise of an insurance premium of £150 per annum. That is illegal under the Housing Act. It is defective in other ways because it calls upon the purchaser to keep the property in good order and to leave it so on any cancellation of the contract. However, the contract cannot be cancelled; only set aside. It is an illegal contract. My advice to people who are being conned by Mr. Reuben is to take action under the housing Acts.
  I have here the kind of letter that Mr. Reuben writes to tenants and ex-tenants. This is how he deals with them. It reads like one of Joe Maplin's letters to his holiday camp manager. The letter is from L. I. Reuben and Company Limited and it reads:
  "Dear Sirs,

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  We acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 25th June 1982 and having read the contents we wish to state here and now in the vernacular that you are not on. You have seen all the letters we have written to you so your letter of the 25th June in our opinion is from a stupid person or a devious one".
  That devious or stupid person has just been conned out of hundreds or thousands of pounds by Mr. Reuben.
  "Please read the following very slowly, with a ruler if needed.
  1. Keys were never handed in. 2. Notice to quit was never accepted."
  Mr. Reuben had no intention of issuing a notice to quit.
  "3. The flat still contains furniture. We refer to our letter of 22nd June 1982, paragraph 2, which is reproduced for slow readers:
  PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT UNTIL SUCH TIME AS WE GET VACANT POSSESSION OF THE FLAT AND INDEED ACCEPT VACANT POSSESSION OF THE FLAT YOUR CLIENT REMAINS LIABLE FOR ANY VANDALISM THAT OCCURS."
  There has been evidence that some of the vandalism has been carried out by Mr. Reuben's "heavies" after tenants have moved out, in order to increase their bill. The letter said:
  "The matter is now in the hands of our solicitors".
  That letter is signed by L. I. Reuben and Company Ltd.
  That is the kind of thing that goes on in the private rented sector yet the hon. Member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port (Mr. Porter) had the audacity to talk about the unacceptability of public landlords. That sector is full of such people although perhaps not quite so bad. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) referred to a man who has just emerged in my constituency, renting properties and exploiting people.
  The next Labour Government must reverse the Government's policies. We must stop the exploitation of people by private landlords. We must stop believing that property is something that people can invest money in and make a profit from. We must develop policies, unlike those in the Bill, which will revitalise the public rented sector and build low-rise council flats for rent. As Aneurin Bevan said, the best kind of rent control is nine people chasing 10 houses. We do not want a shortage of houses which can be exploited. We want a surplus. Labour's programme for jobs, our alternative economic strategy, requires a massive council house building and modernisation programme to get people back to work, to reflate the economy in a Socialist way and to meet housing need appropriately, without exploitation or public money being used for private gain. That is what the next Labour Government will do.
  7.59 pm
  Mr. Neil Thorne: With permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I will speak on all three parts of the Bill but first on parts II and III. Therefore, I shall not immediately refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts), although I shall say a few words on the matter later.
  I am a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) rightly said that that organisation is not in favour of all the proposals in parts II and III. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors does of course represent a large number of professional people who work in building control. I am not at all surprised, therefore, that they should be in favour of retaining the present arrangements rather than becoming privatised. I can assure the hon.
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  Lady that when the Bill becomes an Act, those who are members of the Institution will ensure that it works in accordance with the will of Parliament.
  If I may, I will refer to a number of points of detail. Clause 23 does not require the approved inspector to certify that the plans are correct and comply with the building regulations; that happens only if he is requested to do so by the owner of the building. That is wrong. The inspector should be required to certify the plans in the first place, because it is not unusual for owners of buildings and builders to go bankrupt during a development. When that happens, questions are raised about the refinancing of the project. If a certificate that the plans comply with the building regulations is not issued in the first place, an additional dimension will be added to the problems of redeveloping a site.
  We all know of the anguish caused to adjoining owners and to the public generally when they see a building site half completed and left, on occasion, for many years. I have such a site in my constituency which has been half completed for about 15 years. I can assure my hon. Friend the Minister that it causes a great deal of annoyance to everyone involved, not least the adjoining shop owners who find great difficulty in overcoming the problem caused by a void area in the middle of a shopping parade. It would be wrong to allow that to be supported by the Bill, as it would if it did not require the inspector to certify that the plans complied with byelaws at the outset.
  My second point concerns clause 34, which provides that the Secretary of State has power to
  "approve and issue any document (whether or not prepared by him or by the body concerned) …"
  At the moment, a number of bodies, including the British Standards Institution, can certify certain building materials. Although some of us may not always agree with the way in which this body proceeds, it is highly reputable and does a conscientious job. The belief that there could be a large number of other organisations—perhaps development associations for bricks, timber or something similar, which might in future acquire some authority to lay down rules and regulations which would be adopted by the Minister without further ado—causes concern in the profession. Such a position could raise a conflict of interest.
  As the Government have been anxious to avoid conflicts of interest in other Bills, I hope that they will examine this matter carefully and will not proceed in this way without limiting such bodies most severely. A producers' organisation is not necessarily in the best position to give impartial advice on what the public should accept in the way of its products.
  Clause 35 provides that where a disagreement takes place between a local authority inspector and a building owner the matter can be referred to the Secretary of State for decision but only where the matter is in compliance with the previously approved documents. This is probably far too narrow because there may be a sound reason for alterations to an existing proposal. It would be wrong if the Secretary of State were not in a position to decide the issue purely and simply on this technicality but it is important that he should be prepared to listen to any proposal that stems from a disagreement between the building owner and the local authority over the implementation of byelaws. I know that my right hon. Friend is anxious to reduce the work load on his Department by every possible means, but I am convinced

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  that this proposal will raise more problems than it will solve. It should be considered carefully before a decision is made.
  Under clause 38 the Secretary of State is required to consult the Building Regulations Advisory Committee. I understand that that consultation would be only on matters of a technical nature. However, the committee would be concerned about administrative and other matters as well as technical issues. I hope that my right hon. Friend will consider this provision before the Bill is enacted. It is clear that there is a need to consult people of this calibre on these issues and not merely on narrow technical points.
  I turn my attention to part I of the Bill. I agree very much with what my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) said about shared ownership. He suggested that it will be too restrictive if we start with the 50 per cent. provision. I also hope that my right hon. Friend will consider the possibility of starting with 25 per cent. There are many who would very much like to own their own property. Labour Members have been making much of the claim that ownership of property does not necessarily increase the overall stock. I do not agree with them. In my experience, when people own their own property they considerably lengthen the life of the property.
  That is an important aspect of owner-occupation. Apart from increasing the housing stock, it is important to recognise the need to increase the life of properties so that the resources that are available can be used to build elsewhere. Therefore, it is important to have as many owner-occupiers as possible. The 50 per cent. requirement seems unduly restrictive. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will reconsider the issue and accept 25 per cent. as the starting point.
  Labour Members still seem to believe that home ownership should be restricted to those who are especially affluent. This is entirely the wrong policy. The hon. Member for Bolton, West responded to my earlier intervention by saying that she believed that everyone occupying a council house should fall into the category of being poor. We have fewer than 20 million houses in Britain, of which more than 6 million are council houses. This tends to put about 15 million people into what she would consider as the poor category.
  That is not fair and reasonable. Undoubtedly all these properties—those which have been built for local authorities and those built by housing associations originally for poorer people with the use of public money—should be available for purchase as those people become more affluent. The simple reason is that there is no mechanism available for turning people out of the property that they occupy. If Opposition Members were to argue that when council tenants reach a certain income—for example, the average wage of manual workers—they must leave their council houses or housing association premises and make provision for themselves, their case might be more forceful, but I have heard no Opposition Members use that argument tonight.
  Mr. Allan Roberts: Is the hon. Member aware that, because of Government policy on rent increases and the unrestricted amount of tax relief that owner-occupiers enjoy, the opposite is true? Owner-occupiers are subsidised more than council tenants. If the hon.
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  Gentleman is worried about those who live in subsidised houses, he should advocate that people move out of owner-occupied houses, and into council houses that are not subsidised and leave owner-occupied dwellings to those who cannot afford to rent from the council.
  Mr. Thorne: The hon. Member is wrong to say that there is no limit to tax relief allowances. There is a limit of £25,000 that many people believe should be raised. Furthermore, he does not fully understand that, whether or not a person pays a rent that is commensurate with the property that he is renting or whether he is buying a property, he desires to buy it because he wishes to make a contribution towards its maintenance and future use. Whether a person owns an interest in his property is of great importance to him. It is unusual for tenants to take as much interest in a property as an owner-occupier. One need only visit a council estate to see the way in which people who have invested in their own future have lavished time and money on their accommodation.
  I welcome private ownership, and I hope that it will be enlarged again in the future. There is nothing wrong with private ownership. I applaud the fact that people now have a wonderful opportunity under the present Government to purchase their property at a discount, which takes into account the fact that the property has been let and is not with vacant possession.
  Opposition Members have already asked whether properties in the private sector should be sold with discounts. Obviously the Opposition do not realise that owners have been selling their properties to their tenants for years and invariably give discounts to their tenants similar to those given by local authorities. In addition, the owners do not require the resale of the property back to themselves if their tenants move out a week later. The landlord has no pre-emption rights and on most occasions he was more than pleased to get half of the open market value for the property.
  During the past 20 years, landlords have been extremely willing to sell to their tenants if they receive a realistic offer. An offer of 50 per cent. of the value was not unusual. That is not unreasonable, since under existing legislation and the present system of rent control, a sitting tenant has a special advantage if he wishes to buy the property. Undoubtedly, with the present tax relief and falling interest rates, one can now buy a property at a reasonable price and thereby invest in one's future without paying more than one pays in rent. Of course, one must take on the additional responsibility of maintaining the premises, but the Government should encourage such investment as much as possible because it will preserve the nation's accommodation. If we do not do that, property deteriorates.
  The hon. Member for Bootle mentioned the donkey that marched past the flat on an eighth floor balcony and that was accommodated in the lift shaft at night. If that had happened in a block of flats where the majority of people owned their homes, an alternative arrangement would have been made because those people would have taken an immediate interest in the effect on the value of their property. There would have been no need to move the old lady because the other tenants would not have accepted the position. The hon. Gentleman sums up the difference in attitude between those who have a basic interest in the property that they occupy and those who believe that local

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  or central Government should take on all their responsibilities and cares and deal with the matter on their behalf.
  Mr. Allan Roberts: The old lady who complained took an interest in her council property and looked after it very well, as did most of the other tenants in the block. However, they still did not wish to buy their flats but wished to transfer to council houses.
  Mr. Thorne: If they used the incident to better their position and to move into council houses, that is a different matter. I assure the hon. Gentleman that many privately owned flats are well maintained. People are happy to live in them and have no desire to use any vehicle to move to a house. I question the way in which the properties are maintained, because those who live there do not have such a high personal stake as owner-occupiers. If one has a personal stake, one's attitude is different and one must ensure that the investment does not lose value because of the unnecessary and cavalier behaviour of other tenants. The Government must encourage the sale of council homes and are doing so.
  The ownership of flats and houses and their purchase from housing associations is important. A technical point that I wish to get out of the way now is the sale of local authority and housing association flats that have 50 years to run on the lease. For houses the term is 22 years. What happens at the end of that time? I am not sure whether my hon. Friend believes that the much shorter 22 years for a house is acceptable whereas 50 years is required for a flat because the leaseholder may then be eligible, under the Leasehold Reform Act, to purchase the freehold. If that is his intention, I fully support the proposal. If, however, that is not the thinking behind the measure, it must be further examined, because if the occupier wishes to sell the premises he may find that only 10 or 15 years remain on the lease. That would raise problems with mortgages and the maintenance of the property, because the person who is interested in purchasing a property for cash will do so only on a short-term basis and the area would deteriorate quickly. That is contrary to the Government's intentions on the matter and I hope that my hon. Friend can reassure us.
  The 50 years for flats is itself short. I know that there are problems about extending the Leasehold Reform Act to flats, but I hope that something can be done to reassure people here as well, because 50 years does not leave a great deal of time. If a mortgage runs for 20 or 25 years of that, the lease will then become very thin. I hope, therefore, that some comment can be made on what is likely to happen at the end of that period.
  I especially welcome this part of the Bill as in an Adjournment debate on 19 April this year I raised the case of Mr. and Mrs. J. Reed of 135 Thorold Road in my constituency. Mr. and Mrs. Reed were on the council waiting list for many years, hoping to be able to obtain a council house. Unfortunately, as they had no children, their priority was not high and they had no immediate prospects of securing such accommodation.
  The local authority—the London borough of Redbridge—had always been anxious not to create a vast council estate that would take over the whole area as it felt that it was important to have other forms of tenure. It was anxious that it should encourage as many owner-occupiers as possible, for the reasons that I have already given. It
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  also felt that people who could not purchase could go some way in that direction by becoming tenants of a housing association. The borough and the Housing Corporation therefore lent money to various housing associations with a view to providing accommodation as an alternative to council housing or purchasing in the private sector.
  At the last general election, the Conservative manifesto made it clear that the Conservatives proposed as soon as possible to give the right to buy to council tenants and tenants of housing associations. That was a matter for great rejoicing by many people, not least my constituents. Mr. and Mrs. Reed had been extremely conscientious tenants. Unlike so many, they had spent a good deal of money on the premises that they occupied. I believe that they invested considerably more than £2,000 some time ago on improvements such as double glazing. That was to the benefit of the property as a whole. It was also a further reason why they were especially pleased when they heard of the Conservative proposal and overjoyed when the Conservative Government were returned in 1979.
  It was extremely upsetting for Mr. and Mrs. Reed then to find that they could not purchase their home under the 1980 Act because they were tenants of a housing association which, although it was not a charity, operated under the charitable rules. Naturally, they hoped that things would be sorted out as soon as possible so that they would have the opportunity to purchase the property, I expressed their anxiety during my Adjournment debate, and since then I have had further discussions with Ministers.
  I had hoped that in this Bill we should have the answer to their problems because they were tenants of a housing association with charitable status. They moved into their accommodation in 1970 and became tenants of the Trinity housing association which has now been taken over by the East London housing association. That puts a different complexion upon it. I understand that the automatic right to purchase is being given only to those people who have moved into accommodation which was purchased by housing associations after 1974.
  It would be wrong to exclude those people who are living in accommodation, purchased with money provided by the local authority and the Housing Corporation, whenever that purchase was made. The Government's intention always has been that those people who wish to purchase their property should be enabled to do so provided that the funds came largely from the public exchequer. In this case the money was provided by both national and local government exchequer in the main, and therefore I hope that the Minister can assure me that the provision will apply also to my constituents. I can see no difference between their position and that of those who occupy accommodation built after 1974.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: (Mr. Bernard Weatherill): Order. The Front Bench spokesmen wish to start their speeches at 10 minutes past nine. Four hon. Members have been waiting most of the day. Will those hon. Members bear that in mind when they make their speeches?
  8.27 pm
  Mr. John Cartwright: I agree with the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) that owner-occupiers invest a great deal of time, effort and

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  cash in looking after their homes. Owner-occupation is an important and attractive tenure for many people. However, we should recognise that it is not possible for everyone to be an owner-occupier. I wish that some hon. Members opposite would display a little interest in those people who will never be able to buy their own home.
  The right-to-buy principle has caused a good deal of excitement in the House. I voted against the 1980 legislation, not because I had any ideological hang-ups about selling council houses, but because I objected to the principle of compulsion. In an ideal world the sale of council houses would be a matter for local decision. The position varies from area to area, and while it makes perfect sense to sell council property in some areas it may be a disastrous policy in others.
  Before we had this continual party dog fight, it was something that was looked at on merit. There were always Labour councils that sold council houses and some very prominent members of the Labour Party took advantage of that. A former member of the Tribune group in the House was one of those who did. There have been Tory councils that did not sell because they did not believe it to be in the interests of ratepayers. Unfortunately, the issue has now become completely politicised and is not judged on its merits. Conservatives will sell; Labour will refuse overwhelmingly to sell.
  I do not believe therefore that we can go back to local decision. We must retain the right-to-buy legislation but with a number of changes. I should like to see a provision that enabled a local authority in a housing stress area to seek a suspension of the right to buy for a limited period if evidence could be produced that sales would adversely affect housing in its area. Our present blanket arrangements need some flexibility. Equally, I want to see an increase in the supply of rented housing from sources other than local authorities—in particular, from sources trying to attract institutional investments. We must reduce the current dangerous polarisation between owner-occupation and local authority renting.
  As there is a general right to buy, it ought to be applied as fairly as possible. We all know that practical problems have arisen from the 1980 legislation. Some intending purchasers are unreasonably excluded, others who have the right to buy are unfairly treated by the procedure. I welcome those parts of the Bill which seek to sort out the anomalies.
  I welcome the provisions in clause 1 relating to the tenants of leasehold properties. I accept that practical problems are associated with those provisions, but they are right in principle.
  I give a more cautious welcome to the shared ownership lease principle. Part buying and part renting can bring owner-occupation within the grasp of lower income families. This has a considerable part to play in the private housing market, particularly when used by housing associations. I have no objection in principle to using this provision in the purchase of council houses, but as the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) reminded us, it will clearly add to the administrative problems in housing departments. It will raise a number of complex issues, especially when district heating systems and arrangements for other services are considered.
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  I fear that this will be a happy hunting ground for local authorities that are reluctant to see the provision work. It will need determined tenants to achieve shared purchase in some local authority areas.
  I wish to concentrate my remarks on clause 5 and schedule 3, which deal with service charges. To begin with, I should like to comment on the tactics employed by the London borough of Greenwich. Greenwich, under Labour control, has done all that it possibly can to deter tenants from buying their homes. First, there was the traditional delay in processing the applications. Once that was out of the way, there was a denial of any programmed decorations or anything but essential repairs for tenants who had the effrontery to submit a right-to-buy application. From then on, their decoration and repair applications were blacklisted.
  There was also the delightful idea that the council would refuse to sell the garage to anyone who brought a council house. Even when the garage was in the garden of the property, the council tried not to sell it. It has now been argued out of that, but the council is refusing to sell garages that are not within the curtilage of the property being sold.
  Tenants who buy their houses find that after many years of renting a garage they cannot continue to do so. They are then placed at the back of the queue and are in the ridiculous situation of seeing the garage that they have given up stand empty for months while the council tries to let it to someone else.
  Those pressures have been applied not against property speculators, developers or Rachman-like landlords, but against ordinary working people, many of whom have been Labour voters or Labour Party members all their life. Those are the people who are being victimised by the London borough of Greenwich. The problem came to a head over the selling of flats and maisonettes. Labour Members argue with considerable justice that the policy of selling will cream off some of the best houses and the local authority will be left with the undesirable flats and maisonettes.
  Why, then, did the London borough of Greenwich not leap at the prospect of selling flats and maisonettes? Initially, it said that it would love to do so but could not because there was no agreement on service charges. It said that the local authority associations were involved in negotiation with the Department of the Environment about service charges. We discovered that that was untrue.
  The council then said that it would love to sell, but unfortunately could not find a way through the practical problems of dealing with the lease and the service charges. We pointed out that neighbouring authorities had solved those problems and were selling. The council then agreed to sell. It started to process applications in the spring of this year. Potential buyers of flats and maisonettes were shocked by the level of service charges for which the council asked. I shall give examples of those first year charges.
  For a two-bedroomed maisonette in Abbey Wood for the year in which external decoration falls, the service charge is £523 a year. That falls to £173 in years when external decorations do not take place. A two-bedroomed flat in beautiful downtown Plumstead would cost £608 in a year when decorations are due and £258 in other years. A two-bedroomed flat in Charlton would cost £1,989 a year when decorations take place and £1,639 when they do not.

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  The height of stupidity was reached with regard to the Rockmount estate in Plumstead. This is mainly 10-storey blocks of two-bedroomed flats. The council said that it thought that the service charge on those flats would be about £3,500 a year. Those are only the first year charges. They are payable in advance on completion and would rise annually, as the council points out.
  Taking on that type of commitment would put tenants in jeopardy for the rest of their lives. They would have tremendous difficulty reselling their flat or maisonette with that type of millstone around their necks.
  It is not surprising that intending purchasers have been forced to back out. They were not trying to cream off the most desirable properties. They were merely trying to buy flats and maisonettes in not particularly sought after areas.
  We then tried to find out the details of the service charges. We discovered after much hard work—the details were not volunteered by the local authority—that some elements of the service charges were doubtful. Some people were being asked to pay service charges for facilities that they had never used and, in some cases, did not even know existed. They included laundries and play areas a long way from where they lived. They were also to be charged for services that are used by the general public—estate roads, amenity greens, community centres, and even street lighting. Those are examples of facilities that intending purchasers were asked to pay for if they had the temerity to try to buy council property.
  Some of those problems also affect those who are trying to buy houses. The charges are not so large, but people are still having difficulty in finding out the details. In many cases, they are not discovering the full impact of the service charge until just before the sale is completed.
  I therefore welcome clause 5 and schedule 3, which are aimed at limiting the extent of the charges to what is reasonable in terms of cost. They also provide a basic right of information.
  I return to the point that I made during the Secretary of State's speech. I asked how real would be the protection for those who succeeded in purchasing property. Who will decide what is a reasonable charge? Who will settle what is a reasonable standard of work for which the owner-occupiers must pay? I hope that the Minister will not tell us that action in the county court will settle those matters. We are discussing ordinary council tenants who do not have the resources to take on a powerful local authority in the courts.
  I shall now comment on clause 2, which deals with charitable housing associations. Like other hon. Members, I declare my interest as a former member of the board of management of the London and Quadrant housing trust. I am still a shareholder in that trust. I strongly object to what is proposed in clause 2. Housing associations are voluntary bodies, not Government agencies that may be instructed. The fact that they receive Government grants does not alter that position. As other hon. Members have pointed out, private landlords receive grants, yet they will not be faced with their tenants having the right to buy.
  Moreover, there is a legal duty on charities to get the best possible price for any assets that they sell. It is for the charities themselves to decide whether such a sale is beneficial. The Government are creating an extremely dangerous precedent by forcing sales that are against the wishes of the charity—and at substantial discounts.
  Most important of all, there is an urgent need for more choice in the availability of rented accommodation. We
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  should provide more sources than merely local authorities for rented housing, especially in large cities. That is where charitable housing associations have some valuable property. The Notting Hill housing trust, the Peabody trust, the Battersea Churches housing trust and many others provide vital housing stock in stress areas. All are under threat as a result of this legislation. This clause is a retrograde step. It is not justified on the basis of the facts. It is based purely on political dogma. That is why my right hon. and hon. Friends and I have put down an Instruction to the Committee on this part of the Bill. We shall do our best to remove this clause in Committee.
  I agree with those hon. Members who say that the Bill is largely irrelevant to the major housing problems. It is no answer to the fact that we are not building sufficient new homes to meet the growing need. Nor is it any answer to the fact that the existing housing stock is deteriorating to a worrying degree. It will not help to provide sufficient choice in rented housing. However, with the one glaring exception of the threat to charitable associations in clause 2, the Bill is not positively harmful. It will do some good in dealing with anomalies. It merits unenthusiastic support. That is what I propose to give it.
  8.41 pm
  Mr. Peter Bottomley: I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright), although I cannot support his objections to certain parts of the Bill. Many of my constituents also suffer severely under the policies of the obnoxious Greenwich council majority group. No longer can it be claimed that the Greenwich council is serving its people in the manner that it did when the hon. Member for Woolwich, East was its leader or even when Arthur Capelin served as leader until earlier this year.
  The present Greenwich Labour group is doing its best to trample ordinary people into the ground, even to the extent that it has been criticised by Ken Livingstone. I talked to Ken Livingstone during a debate at the Cambridge Union a few days ago. I put to him the case of a 47-year-old man who, for the past 20 years, has been looking after his mother in their council house. They had voluntarily given up a four-bedroom home to move into a two-bedroom house 14 years ago. The council had therefore obtained 28 bedroom years, if I may use my own jargon.
  As soon as the mother died Greenwich council said that the man must be compulsorily moved. I believe that the council took that harsh and unfeeling attitude because the mother and son together had applied to buy and the council had not responded within the four weeks, which is the requirement under the Housing Act 1980. The case has since been pursued in the county court.
  I do not wish to argue the merits because the judgment is not yet known. If care in the community means anything, it means encouraging people to accept family responsibilities and to keep elderly people in their own homes. they should not be penalised by an instruction to move when they have spent many years—in some cases 20 years—helping their families. Ken Livingstone condemned the action. I. condemn it. I hope that Greenwich council will reverse its policy as soon as possible whatever the outcome of the court case.
  Another constituent, a woman of 57, has received similar treatment. It is the sort of behaviour that we have come to expect of Greenwich council. The sooner the

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  council changes its ways or is curtailed by the law the better. I shall look forward, if I serve on the Committee, to pressing my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench to do more to make clear our intention under the 1980 Act.
  I have as many examples as the hon. Member for Woolwich, East of the behaviour of Greenwich council. A tenant was told that he could not buy his garage and therefore applied to the council for permission to construct a garage in the garden. In giving permission, Greenwich council said that the cost would be £1,000. That sort of behaviour strikes me as unreasonable. I shall be interested to discover if any Labour Member supports Greenwich council in what it has done.
  I shall not enter into the argument about whether it is right that councils should be required to sell. In a borough that is built up, there is no way in which the tenants of Greenwich can share in the general movement towards owner-occupation without using compulsory powers making local authorities agree to voluntary purchase by people of their council homes.
  The hon. Member for Woolwich, East talked about service charges. In my constituency there are many cottage estates. We hope that they will be mixed in ownership as well as in residence. People got council houses because they were in need. Since then the financial circumstances or family circumstances of many of them have changed and many choose to buy. When they try to do so they discover that Greenwich council is charging them for the use of launderettes that are open to everyone and are not confined to people on the estate and that they are asked to pay for the upkeep of greens when, until the council took that attitude, it had been assumed by everyone that the cost of maintaining such facilities was borne on the rates.
  If Greenwich has a claim, I hope that the Bill will dispose of it. If not, I shall table amendments and I shall try to persuade my hon. Friends to accept them. If the charges were previously carried on the rates, the council does not have the right to impose them now. The council does not have the right to require someone who lives on the ground floor or in a ground floor and first floor maisonette to have the outside of his home redecorated by the council. That is unnecessary when a man could do it himself, using a ladder.
  Greenwich is one of the worst local authorities in the country. Its actions are at variance with the wishes of individual members of the Labour Party. I suspect that they are at variance with the wishes of most Labour members of Greenwich council. It is time to do something about that.
  Mr. Joseph Dean: Who voted for them?
  Mr. Bottomley: It is right that we should take legislative action. I shall follow up the point that was made by the Opposition Whip, the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Dean), who is now consulting his diary after talking more than he is supposed to. He asked who elected those people. The answer is that few people support them.
  Those who are members of the Labour Party in Woolwich, West should do two things. First they should find out from individual Labour councillors why they are taking their present attitude and why they appear to hate ordinary tenants who want to exercise the normal ambition of owning their own home. If they find that the local
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  Labour Party will pay no attention to them, they should then stop paying contributions to the Labour Party and, if they are members of a trade union, they could contract out of paying the political levy and join one of the alternative parties that wants to make sure that the people of Greenwich have a chance of owning their own homes.
  I shall give one example of people who want to own their own homes. A family in my constituency has a handicapped child, who can live with them. There is a reasonable chance that the child will be able to go on living in the home in which it has been brought up, in the community, and with community support, after the parents have died. The parents do not want to put the child at the risk of being compulsorily transferred by Greenwich council. We have seen examples of people who are hale and hearty suffering from the threat of being moved. For good reasons those parents want to continue living in their own home. They want to own it so that they can leave it to their child without let or hindrance, by making sure that the major costs for the house have been paid. However, Greenwich council takes the attitude that it will not go along with those ordinary wishes.
  Many other things could be said about Greenwich council. I think that it would be a good idea if I were on the Committee. I warn my hon. Friend the Minister that we have not gone far enough. We have not gone far enough on the matter of secure tenants who move into short-life accommodation because they want a larger home and then go back to ordinary council housing. The Bill does not account for the time in between when they are living in what is supposed to be short-life accommodation. That period could be 10 years. So many anomalies need to be dealt with when we are dealing with a council such as Greenwich.
  I hope that when Labour Members come to speak on Committee they will have the guts to stand up and condemn their political colleagues on Greenwich council for doing things that no reasonable person could justify. Greenwich council has not tried to justify anything that it has done. It has just said that it opposes what is going on.
  There is one small point that is not covered by the Bill, and is not likely to be. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said a short time ago that she would make no adjustments to mortgage relief while she was First Lord of the Treasury. It is important that she changes her mind. It is important that we concentrate housing help at the time that it is needed, both in terms of mortgage interest relief and of provision of council homes, and that we try to have a system to help council tenants to buy their own homes, if they can afford to do so. People who are owner-occupiers, having received their first mortgage, should have a system that encourages them to pay off as soon as they can. We need to get away from the system that gives greater housing help under mortgage relief to those who are higher paid and receiving relief at the higher rate of tax.
  It may be thought politically unacceptable to say that, but I have said it many times in the House—if one wants to keep a secret one has only to say it in the House—and I shall go on saying it. I hope that I can persuade my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to change her mind rather than having to give up her position before I am successful in my battle.
  8.52 pm
  Mr. A. W. Stallard (St. Pancras, North): I listened attentively to the Secretary of State and, apart from one short break, I have been present throughout the whole debate. I confess that I have become more and more depressed as the evening has worn on by what I have heard.
  The Bill is probably the Secretary of State's and the Government's last chance to say anything important about the worsening state of our housing stock, both public and private, and to announce plans to do something about it before the general election. However, I am afraid that they must have muffed that chance. The Bill as it now stands, and the Secretary of State's opening speech, must seem to many people outside the House, as well as to my right hon. and hon. Friends, to be out of context with, and almost irrelevant to, the real issues facing those of us concerned with housing.
  I have been shown today just how far away from the problems that affect thousands of people are the Secretary of State and many of his right hon. and hon. Friends. The Secretary of State said that one should get out and meet the people to see how pleased they are with the measures in the Bill. What rubbish. I constantly meet people, as most hon. Members do, and I do not know many who would share the right hon. Gentleman's feelings about the Bill. On the contrary, I find that the effect of all this talk about selling council houses and the weight behind the propaganda worries people.
  In my constituency people become frightened that the more talk there is of selling more and more council houses, the longer and longer becomes the wait of those who are distressed and desperately need the only type of accommodation they will ever get. If the Secretary of State came among ordinary folk he would find that they are disgusted with, and contemptuous of, this cynical propaganda in which the Government are indulging in this and other Bills before the general election. It is almost as though the Government are writing their manifesto and, at whatever cost, are determined to give a much-needed boost to the statistics of council houses that have been sold and are up for sale.
  Listening to the Secretary of State's speech, it was difficult to believe, from my long experience of London, that within a few miles radius of the House thousands of people are living in appallingly substandard conditions in what is left of the private sector—short—let properties or hard-to-let dwellings. Some are without basic amenities and others have only shared toilets and bathrooms, with all the problems which that entails. I am not aware of any desire on the part of those tenants to waste their money on buying their hovels. There is no clamour from them to buy these substandard properties.
  However, these properties need improvements. If anything, the Bill could have made provision for improving the standards of housing of these tenants if the Government were serious about tackling the problems. Many people are homeless. Families are homeless. As the housing stock rapidly deteriorates and as unemployment increases, the homeless figures also increase, particularly in inner London as more and more people come to the capital seeking work.
  The more fortunate of these people are living in bed and breakfast accommodation—like refugee camps—until such time as the resource-starved local authorities can help
  782
  them. The time taken to give such help is becoming longer and longer as resources become smaller and smaller and the problems become bigger and bigger. To suggest that we should speak to the people and find out how delighted they are with the Government's housing policy is a travesty of the facts, as most of us know from our constituencies.
  Only yesterday, I received a letter and a pamphlet that pointed out the extent of condensation and damp in our housing stock. The pamphlet's authors estimate that 2 million post-war dwellings are seriously affected by condensation. That figure does not take account of pre-war dwellings or conversions, so the true figure must be much higher than that. The problem is not being treated at all—let alone as urgently as it should be. The Bill could have contained provisions that gave assistance to local authorities and others to tackle that problem.
  I had hoped that the building control provisions and the regulations to be introduced could be extended to tackle the problem. I understand that all hon. Members received the pamphlet, which contains examples of problems in fairly new dwellings. In one London borough I understand that the houses are only sever years old. Houses now stand empty and boarded up because they have been rendered uninhabitable through condensation and damp. The situation is becoming worse and should be given high priority.
  I hope that the Secretary of State will have another think about extending existing clauses, or introducing new clauses or regulations to deal with the urgent crisis in large hostels. That point has been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor). Not five miles from the House, hon. Members will find Arlington House, which is a huge hostel with 1,066 beds. In a recent report it was described as the largest and worst slum in Camden. Men live in cubicles 5ft by 7ft—35 sq ft. As has been said, they live like battery chickens. The local authority's minimum standard is 70 sq ft. The controlling company, Rowton Hotels, has made substantial profits from the miserable circumstances of its tenants and has used the bulk of its profits to invest not in better hostels but in more expensive hotels.
  According to the figures that I have received, Arlington House generated pre-tax profits in 1981 of £280,000 on a turnover of £860,000, and £350 was ploughed back into improvements. In the past 11 weeks, workers at that establishment have been on strike for more wages. They are also residents in the hostel. They earn the princely sum of £26 for a 48-hour week, excluding the cubicle and the cost of some food. I should add that food in that hostel is sometimes dearer than the food sold in the House. Those who can least afford it are expected to buy it.
  The employers have reacted by sacking the strikers and taking them to court for possession of the cubicles. Needless to say, they have gained the necessary court permission and the whole panoply of State machinery—the police, the bailiffs, the Black Marias and so on—are being assembled to evict 40 men later this week, without any regard to the consequences for them but as a warning to those who dare to ask for more in that Dickensian institution. The owners have also intimated their intention to quit the hostel business, thus creating more misery and uncertainly where it can least be endured. I know that they will want to get out, because the business is no longer profitable. The place is in such a mess and

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  needs so much money to put it right that they want to slide out and leave the problem to someone else. There is no more profit in it for them.
  I am worried about the condition of the hostel and the men who live there. I am not aware of any clamour by the residents of the hostel to buy their cubicles. Nor am I aware of any provision in the Bill that would allow them to do so, although I should not be surprised if someone were to suggest one in Committee. I am aware, however, of the urgent need for the Government to intervene and to provide money to assist local authorities and housing associations to buy these hostels, so that a properly planned, phased programme of improvement, replacement and adjustment to densities can take place. That is what I want. I would invert the process and allow housing associations to buy large as well as small hostels, because they and the local authorities are the only bodies which can manage this type of accommodation.
  I want the Minister to tackle one other matter before the Bill goes to Committee, and that is the need for the enactment and enforcement of stricter standards of fire precautions, repairs and amenities in houses in multiple occupation. The subject was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West in opening the debate from the Opposition Front Bench. I am aware of the Minister's appreciation and understanding of the problem and of the steps that he has already taken, but we are entitled to demand that he takes the opportunity afforded by the Bill to improve still further the regulations governing these matters. He will know that the limitations of size—at present 500 square metres—cover only the large hostels, and that many of the fire tragedies in recent years have occurred in smaller units not covered by regulations.
  The Minister will know, too, from previous debates on this subject, that 52 people died in recent years in houses in multiple occupation as a result of fires, and hundreds more have been rendered homeless. We need legislation now to impose higher standards of fire safety, prevention of overcrowding, enforcement of repairs and adequate standards of amenity and management in all multiple-occupied premises. That would have been a perfectly good reason for introducing a housing Bill at this stage. Such provisions could still be included in this Bill between now and the Committee stage. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will respond favourably to my proposals and bring forward, before the Committee stage, suitable Government amendments to deal with the problems that I have mentioned.
  9.2 pm
  Mr. Robert Litherland: I shall be as brief as I can in the short time that is available.
  In opening, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) told us what it was all about. The sale of housing association accommodation should not surprise us. It is a dogmatic approach and a progression of the Government's policy to hive off the lucrative sections of public housing in their quest for privatisation. No public asset is safe from their clutches. The process will continue, and it should not surprise us.
  The Government's gluttony towards public assets is insatiable. The sale of council houses was the Government's attempt to buy the votes of council tenants by offering the best in public housing at giveaway prices.
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  The private sector has failed miserably to meet the housing needs of people, especially in inner city areas. This latest extension of the Government's policy, which will affect the housing associations, is an admission of defeat.
  The Government's housing policy has been a disaster, as has been already said in this debate. They have the worst house building record since the mid-twenties, while thousands of construction workers languish on the dole, and millions of house-building bricks are stockpiled and remain unused, and thousands wait on waiting lists throughout the country. The Bill will not provide one extra home. It is just another gimmick at the expense of the people who desperately need homes, as housing waiting lists continue to grow, and hopes of decent accommodation diminish.
  The housing associations in Manchester have complemented local authority housing at a time when people cannot afford to buy. It is all right for the Government to say that interest and mortgage rates are coming down, but that is not the real question. It is the purhasing power that controls the market. With 4 million people unemployed, the purchasing power is not available. The Bill will be detrimental to such people's aspirations as more houses are taken out of the rent pool.
  In my constituency there is an estate built by a company in the Bison Group, Northern Concrete Ltd. It is a system-built package deal—a monstrosity with a deck access design built only 11 years ago. Three weeks ago the city council brought in the demolition squad and it is now being demolished. There are 1,000 jerry-built, damp-ridden flats which have been a disaster and a scandal. They were a sheer waste of the tax payers' and ratepayers' money. We have not sold one dwelling on that estate. A thousand families must be rehoused, adding to the strain on Manchester city council's waiting list. The housing associations will assist the Manchester city council to alleviate that problem. Any reduction in their stock of rented property will only add to the problem.
  Conservative Members have talked about inner city areas having no soul because of a lack of financial interest. They live in cloud-cuckoo-land. The people in my inner city area are not all Members of Parliament, consultants or professional people. There are about 30 per cent. unemployed. My advice bureau is full of people on social security. Those people cannot buy houses and it is they who need rented accommodation.
  We have built such people a new Jerusalem, the maisonette land and so on. Now it is falling round their shoulders. We want proper traditional housing in bricks and mortar. In Manchester, the best houses that have been built by direct works are now subsidising the system-built rubbish that is falling down. The estate at Wellington Street, Beswick, is one reason why the Bill should be opposed.
  Housing on that estate is inadequate and nobody in their right senses would purchase such dwellings. Living in them denies them that opportunity, and to reduce the overall housing stock by including housing association properties diminishes their chance of better housing. Who is responsible for the rapid deterioration of the estate and the latent defects? Responsibility for designing and building must ultimately lie with the designer and builder.
  Much clarification of the Bill is needed. There should be further consultation with the appropriate bodies before changing to a system of private certification. The Royal Institute of British Architects considers it essential that the

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  law on liability for latent defect should be amended and the recast regulations made available before any recommendations relating to any form of certification can be put to its members. Therefore, the Secretary of State does not have the support of the RIBA.
  The burden of liability must be clarified. It would appear that time is unlimited. How can a person be expected to underwrite for all time a building the construction and design of which he has no control over? What insurance cover would be adequate to cover the cost of major projects? Will the eventual outcome be a switch away from the expert bodies on building regulations that we know towards the insurance companies? It would be a brave independent person who took on the task of issuing certificates for a building project with liability unlimited in time. Some areas of the Bill require greater study and consideration before change is envisaged. Some clauses require clarification.
  The RIBA is concerned that its previous recommendations have been ignored by the Secretary of State. It recommends that suitably qualified private and professional practitioners be allowed the option to self-certify building works, whether it be in part or whole, or alterations to existing buildings. It also refers in its recommendations to suitable insurance. Here again, there is an element of doubt.
  I shall give, for example, the hypothetical case of an architect who has worked all his life in the public sector, possibly with a local authority, and is due to retire. He may feel that he would welcome the opportunity to do certification work, as he is a suitably qualified and competent practitioner. However, at his time of life, he might feel that he should limit his involvement to five years or so—a limited time of involvement with an unlimited time of risk. How would a retiring public sector architect be able to cover the cost of a major claim? Would his successors take on the risk? Would an insurance company give him the unlimited cover?
  If a disaster occurred, there should be a reasonable body which accepts liability. For an independent person to be responsible, suitable insurance would have to be provided. The Bill is extremely vague on this point. Successive public health legislation has made the building control system rather cumbersome. If change is to be made, greater thought and consultation must take place.
  9.11 pm
  Mr. Ted Graham: I regret very much that time did not allow my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Hogg) to contribute to the debate. He sat through the debate from its beginning. It is evidence of the interest of both sides of the House that, unfortunately, he was squeezed out at the end.
  I begin by commenting briefly on the speech of the Secretary of State, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard). The Secretary of State invited Labour Members to go outside among the people and talk to them in the real world. He said that a social revolution was going on that, apparently, Labour Members had not seen. Credentials have been paraded publicly and honourably from both sides of the House. Opposition Members have declared interests nothing greater than membership of housing associations or the fact that they are owner-occupiers or involved in housing. Conservative Members have declared their interests as architects, as estate agents, as members
  786
  of development companies, as members of the Conservative Central Office at some time in the past, as directors of house building associations and as surveyors. A variety of qualifications have been paraded during the debate.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor), in a forceful and successful speech, exposed substantially the yawning gaps which have been revealed in the Bill during the debate. It has been mentioned time after time, not only by Labour Members but by Conservative Members, that elements of the Bill have not been thought through. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West dealt effectively with the attempts of Conservative Members to deride the genuine concern of Labour Members for those in housing need and for public safety.
  We cannot divorce the thrust of the Government's intentions in the Bill from their broad philosophy and strategy across the whole area of housing endeavour. Historians will look back on the case made out for the Bill in the present housing crisis as a joke in the worst possible taste. It fails completely to measure up to the needs of the people. It sets out to give those who already enjoy a home and a good landlord, or a good landlord-tenant relationship, the opportunity of a free gift—the accrued and enhanced equity of the home in which they live—even though this has been created by others as well as themselves. The Bill chooses to do this at a time when there are millions of families in desperate housing need. They have been made to suffer as a result of the Government's cuts and restrictions.
  The second Tory housing goal in the Bill is a continued attack on the public service. The first part of the Bill seeks to promote and encourage greed. The second part seeks to reward those in the private sector who profess to have an interest in the health and safety of those who occupy a building or who pass by a building. In reality, their prime interest is to make money out of the building to the detriment of long-standing, well-tested and respected procedures.
  The Bill has been foisted on the House and the country but it has been shown to be unloved and unwanted. It has been insufficiently thought through and it is a monument to a cynical disregard for advice that has been tendered. That advice has been ignored or emasculated and tendered as consultation.
  The housing association movement, for cogent reasons, is greatly distressed by these proposals. First, the peg used by the Secretary of State to act so destructively towards housing associations is their receipt of public funds. However, private landlords have had millions of pounds of public money to use to improve their properties. The Bill does not provide private tenants with the right to buy. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) drew attention to the hypocrisy and imbalance of the Government's policy. Housing association grants are eventually repaid so why should the Government change the rules in the middle of the game? What gave the Government the right to apply retrospective conditions?
  Secondly, it is a disgrace for the Government to attack charitable housing associations. Until the introduction of the Bill, a charity has been obliged to sell its assets at the best possible price and only when disposal would be financially in its interests. I trust that the Minister will tell the House how he can square these primary objectives with provisions that force charities to sell their assets. I hope

  787
  that he will recognise that charities have obligations and responsibilities in perpetuity. They act as custodians for the tenants of today and for tomorrow's homeless and disadvantaged.
  I have been advised by Hackney charitable associations—the Under-Secretary and I listened with great care and concern to their representations only the other day—that in Hackney, charitable associations provide 7,000 units of low-rent accommodation to those in housing need, most of them being those in need of rehabilitation. The total stock is increased by 300 units a year. If the take-up of the right to buy is the same as the local authority right to buy, 50 per cent. of the annual output will be lost through sales in the first year after the Bill's enactment. This will mean that the associations will cease to be able to achieve a significant impact in providing accommodation of the sort that is most needed. The capacity of associations generally to offer help to those in the greatest need who are on borough waiting lists by means of nomination will be curtailed. Staffing levels will become unplannable and it is more than likely that properties bought by tenants will be in good condition and relatively maintenance-free while the rest will be left for housing associations to take up.
  The London borough of Enfield has no claim to be different from many other councils. Like many other local authorities it is saddled with a Tory majority. Last month, Enfield council was told that the positon was getting worse. The housing committee reported to it:
  "There are more applicants competing for a dwindling stock of vacancies … We are becoming almost entirely dependent on 'incidental' vacancies in the existing housing stock, now that the new programme is almost at an end."
  In 1979, new build in Enfield—a Tory borough under a Tory Government—was 321 and in 1982, it was 44. Vacancies from all sources in 1979 were 1,999 and in 1982 they were 1,443. The waiting list in 1979 was 5,483 and in 1982 it was 7,292—an increase of 1,809.
  If I were asked by the Minister whether my interest, legislation, and public money should be consumed in ensuring that those who are already well-housed should be given the opportunity to buy, or whether time and money should be spent to those on the waiting list, I should not spend the resources on those wishing to buy council houses.
  Enfield authority controls the Klinger estate in Edmonton—referred to more than once tonight—where the Tory GLC decided to sell the houses that were built for rent, with the connivance of the local Tory council. The recession caused by the Government led them to abandon the plan and now the properties will be rented.
  Whatever benefit it might bring to those who decide to buy their own homes, the first part of the Bill will be a disaster for the housing association movement. I am especially worried about the effect of clause 20 onwards. The proposals in parts II and III are a grave threat to the standing and integrity of health and safety in construction terms.
  Two main themes form the basis of the Government's advocacy of this part of the Bill. First, the Secretary of State is anxious to ensure high standards. Through the clause, the Secretary of State asserts that he wishes to ensure high standards and the reputation of local authority officers who will preserve high standards of integrity and
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  a comprehensive oversight of health and safety standards. However, in pursuit of the Government's declared long-term aims to introduce self-certification, regardless of the lack of evidence to support such a policy, that part of the Bill seeks to destroy the present long-respected system.
  I again ask the Minister to produce the evidence, to which he has alluded more than once in correspondence, that shows that a substantial majority favour the proposed legislation. I shall produce evidence of those who oppose the Bill and the Minister has a duty to name those who are in favour of it. To be fair to the Minister, he has not been too dismissive of the functions of local authority building inspectors. It is right that he should acknowledge their crucial role in co-ordinating a whole range of services. Local authority building control authorities do not operate in isolation. They work closely with architects, fire brigades, environmental health officers, solicitors, engineers, education, social services, planning and finance. Local authority building inspectors liaise with outside bodies, including private architects, contractors, house owners, developers, builders, the GPO and national utilities. A crucial role performed by the local authority is as a repository of local records—plans that give details of building and construction for many years, which have proved invaluable to architects, surveyors and builders. What is to replace this comprehensive service that has always been available and very useful, other than the rights or slogans of individual organisations? Where is the evidence that the present system is inflexible, time-consuming and insensitive to builders' needs?
  Where is the evidence that there is an overwhelming demand for such a change? The second main theme in parts II and III is to maximise self-regulation and to extend the privatisation of public safety standards. What is at present a service for the public good will be turned into an opportunity for private profit. That response by the Tory Party to the small minority of builders and designers who do not understand the regulations and who, rather than trying to comply with them, complain of their existence, is a sell-out and a betrayal of public trust.
  Mr. Latham: Did the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Graham) speak to any builders or designers before he decided to use such hard words?
  Mr. Graham: I do not have permission to mention their names tonight, but I have spoken to local building control officers and to local builders. They do not object to the fact that the building regulations must be amended and radically brought up to date. However, we object to the dilution of those regulations as well as the abandoning of the public to the mercy and incompetence of self-certification. We cannot sacrifice consistency of interpretation and application.
  The Secretary of State called for national standards and consistent enforcement. That will never be achieved with a mixture of public bodies, private individuals, professional practices and other organisations being involved in building control. When commercial and financial pressures prevail, the Secretary of State should worry about the independence of certifiers. The only way in which safety standards can be maintained is to have a democratically accountable building control service.
  As to the role assumed by the National House Building Council, although there are some complementary functions, there is little duplication. The local authority

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  has a statutory responsibility for public health and safety. The NHBC provides a 10-year insurance cover to house buyers and employs inspectors who make only limited visits to private sector sites. Those inspectors do not ensure compliance with building regulations. The local authority building inspectors must establish whether a building has been built in accordance with its requirements. The NHBC has no experience in housing conversion work and is restricted almost exclusively to low-rise housing.
  Many other areas, such as mixed developments, high-rise private sector housing and energy conservation do not come within the ambit of the NHBC. However, most importantly—I was glad that the hon. Member for Melton (Mr. Latham) referred to it—the training and qualifications required are inadequate. Local authority inspectors are trained, not only in general work, but in inspecting buildings and ensuring that they comply with the regulations. They come from the building trade and have great experience. Will the Secretary of State prescribe which examination of which professional bodies are sufficient and whether further examination to prove competence in building control is necessary? Reference was made to the eminent qualifications of architects, engineers and surveyors, but they are not sufficient and must be topped up with other qualifications.
  There was also reference to the need to clarify building insurance. If the Bill becomes law, we shall move from a position of almost absolute liability guaranteed by the public sector to reliance on the private insurance market. The greatest anxiety is caused by the liability for dereliction by approved inspectors. The proposals are a recipe for confusion, litigation and delay. The Institute of Municipal Building Management has no doubts about the Bill and states:
  "In practice the provisions of the Bill will be unworkable, much of what is proposed would be uninsurable, and at the end of the day, authorities would be left to pick up the pieces."
  The insurance industry has told me that it is crucial that we obtain clarification today and in Committee on a wide range of matters. A number of questions are already the subject of consultation or correspondence with the Minister. I remind the Minister of some of the questions that must be answered for the benefit, not just of the insurance industry, but of others such as ourselves and our constituents who will be affected.
  Until such time as a market is created for the kind of insurance cover that is required, what statutory backing will there be for the aggrieved or injured party? As present cover is restricted in both time and scope, it would be wholly inadequate and would not relieve the certifier of legal liability. What is proposed? Will the Bill make insurance of the building compulsory by statute? In the view of the industry, that would raise fundamental issues.
  Does the Minister concede that some form of group insurance arrangement is crucial if some of the problems of individual insurance are to be avoided? Does he recognise that the fixing of minimum indemnity limits is crucial and must form part of the legislation, that any insurance arrangements would be subject to financial limits, and that commercial insurance cannot be expected to provide protection comparable with that provided by the local authorities?
  I shall deal briefly with consultation. The president of the Institute of Building Control Officers said in the winter 1982 issue of the institute's journal:
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  "Despite the fact that the consultation on private certification indicated that virtually no one was wholly in favour of its introduction, the wording of the Bill shows that little heed was taken of any response the Department received."
  What is intended in respect of the exemption of minor works? A whole new horror story and disaster awaits whole communities when the Secretary of State slashes yet again at the legal framework of protection for householders. An earlier consultation paper suggested there should be total exemption from building control of domestic and other small garages, domestic porches and outbuildings, agricultural buildings, and industrial plant buildings, with no deposit of full detailed plans. In my view, that would be madness.
  Who are the majority said to be in favour of these philistine proposals? The Minister must tell us today. He must be aware of the severe criticism, ranging from outright condemnation to substantial reservations, that has reached him from so many sources. I remind him of some of them. There was criticism and rejection from the National Federation of Housing Associations, the Institute of Building Control Officers, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities and other local authority associations, the Institute of Municipal Building Managers, the National Association of Local Government Officers, the Consumers' Association, the insurance industry, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Greater London Surveyors Association and the Institution of Structural Engineers.
  We shall be told, of course, that the proposals are supported by the National House Building Council—surprise, surprise!—by Costain, Wimpey, Wates and other organisations of that kind, as well as by a myriad of small builders, all anxious to wriggle out of the present irksome restrictions that are clearly designed for the public good.
  The Secretary of State began his insidious campaign against the protection of the public in building and construction more than three years ago at the Institute of Housing conference on 27 June 1979 when he categorised his targets in the following manner:
  "I am looking at this because I am determined that the construction of housing and of all other buildings shall be freed of petty, unnecessary and bureaucratic restrictions."
  Since then, the Secretary of State has waged war against the public sector in favour of the private sector. Where there have been no windmills to tilt at he has invented them and knocked them down with synthetic vigour. He has invented sham faults with fanatical zeal. The Secretary of State is a phoney. He has presented hopeless and dangerous proposals in the Bill that will cause untold harm to our environment and for generations to come.
  The Secretary of State has invited comments and then ignored them. He has caused fear and apprehension across the spectrum of interested and caring people. He is storing up disasters which will be buried today only to emerge in the future. He has failed the nation to serve his friends. The Bill is a monument to his crass stupidity which should be rejected with contempt.
  I invite my right hon. and hon. Friends to join me in voting against the Bill.
  9.35 pm
  The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. John Stanley): Contrary to the impression created by the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Graham), there is substantial support for our building control proposals, as

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  I shall show. The House will be aware that there are two distinct and important strands to those proposals. One is the recasting of the building regulations and the other is private certification. I should like to deal with them separately. There is no doubt or dispute in the construction industry that reform of building control and the recasting of the regulations is long overdue.
  I was interested in the remark by the right hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Freeson) when he acknowledged that the reform of the building regulations was overdue. I disagreed, however, with virtually everything else he said. The building regulations have become exceedingly complex and long. They run to more than 350 pages of secondary legislation. They are exceptionally difficult for the construction industry to use, as was brought out in the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Melton (Mr. Latham).
  There is an imperative need to bring the building regulations up to date. They abound with anachronisms. On page 177 of the building regulations a detailed, legalistic description is given to the building industry of how it should construct earth closets in the second half of the twentieth century. That shows the need to bring the building regulations up to date.
  The hon. Member for Edmonton suggested that there was a serious difference of view within the construction industry as to whether the building regulations should be brought up to date. We have had 128 responses broadly in favour of the Government's proposals and only 12 against. The bodies in favour included the AMA, the ADC, the RIBA, the RICS, the NFBTE, the House Builders Federation, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Structural Engineers, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Building Control Officers and the Society of Chief Building Control Officers among others.
  Mr. Graham: If there has been some confusion in which I have played a part, I apologise, but I do not believe that is so. I was not making a point about the building regulations. I said more than once that there was general agreement that the building regulations needed to be brought up to date. We want to know who is in favour of self-certification proposals.
  Mr. Stanley: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making it clear that he recognises that there is overwhelming support for a large section of the Bill that deals with the recasting of the building regulations.
  The Opposition have suggested that the proposals represent a risk to health and safety. I cannot accept that anything in the proposals does that. The Government's position has been set out unambiguously and emphatically in the White Paper "The Future of Building Control in England and Wales". Paragraph 7 makes it clear that
  "The Government consider that the essential purposes of the Regulations should remain the preservation of public health and safety."
  Health and safety considerations have always been, and will remain, uppermost in our minds in considering the future of the building regulations.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman), in a constructive and excellent speech, referred to the desirability of having as much similarity as possible in the building regulations throughout the United
  792
  Kingdom. As he will be aware, the Bill refers to England and Wales, and for a long time the building regulations in England and Wales have been separate from those in other parts of the United Kingdom. I draw his attention to the statement by the Secretary of State for Scotland on 11 November about his own plans to recast the Scottish building regulations, and he emphasised that he would be doing so having in mind the proposals for England and Wales.
  Northern Ireland has its own separate system, and is represented on the BRAC committee. I welcome and endorse what my hon. Friend said about that committee. It has provided, and still does, an important source of advice from a group of experts and highly qualified people. That committee has played an important role in advising us on the recasting of the building regulations.
  Contrary to what the Opposition have said, and although there is controversy in this sphere, there has been support for our private certification proposals. They have been strongly welcomed by the House Builders Federation, and there is no doubt that low-rise house building is particularly suited to private certification. The CBI has responded favourably to the principle of private certification, as has the Institution of Civil Engineers.
  Bodies such as the Association of Consulting Engineers and the Chartered Institute of Building, although they see difficulties arising from the law on liability for negligence, have also expressed general support for the concept of certification.
  My hon. Friends the Members for Chipping Barnet and for Melton (Mr. Latham) both referred to liability and insurance. I cannot hold out any prospects of dealing with the law on liability in the Bill. Those matters fall within the jurisdiction of the Lord Chancellor. I can, however, emphasised that the Law Reform Committee has already consulted on the basis of limiting the period of liability for latent damage. Although I cannot anticipate the conclusions of the committee, it is clearly an open question whether the present legal liability position will endure. I should stress that it would not be right to conclude that the option of private certification—and it is only an option—cannot be used with the law in its present state.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. Pawsey) said that no insurers had shown an interest in providing appropriate insurance. I assure him that that is not the case. The British Insurance Association has pointed out that already in the United Kingdom there is a limited market for the provision of a form of defects insurance for commercial properties, although the BIA acknowledges that that will need to be expanded.
  The National House Building Council, a body approved as an insurer by the Department of Trade, has told us that it will widen its current insurance protections for buildings that it certifies. I am glad that the BIA has said of NHBC's arrangements:
  "We agree that the NHBC arrangements appear to provide the framework for a satisfactory way of dealing with this area of building work".
  One insurance company has written to us specifically drawing attention to a policy that it is already operating, which for a single premium provides cover to the building owner for 10 years from completion in respect of structural defects and subsidence. There is no doubt, therefore, that even within the existing legal framework, the NHBC is willing to act as a certifier of low-rise housing. Some

  793
  defects insurance is already available in the commercial sector, as well as the normal form of professional indemnity insurance which is already widely used by professional practices.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Melton asked whether the insurance requirements would be attached to the building or to the certifier. We have deliberately made both possible and both may be used. The key consideration is that whichever is used, or whichever combination is used, there should be a satisfactory means of recourse for the building owner.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. Pawsey) asked about fees for local authorities if they had to take over a building. There is no need for a fee provision because the fees payable for work will be included in the fee arrangements under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
  The proposals on recasting the building regulations command widespread support in the construction industry and the building control authorities. With regard to private certification, the NHBC is ready to come forward as a certifier with insurance proposals for low-rise housing. The insurance industry is already considering how it can produce satisfactory cover for building owners.
  I shall now deal with the right-to-buy provisions. It is interesting that the Opposition have been anxious—no doubt reflecting the success of the right to buy—to point out that they do not oppose the sale of council houses. An interesting distinction between not being against the sale of council houses but opposing the compulsory sale of council houses has been drawn. Conservative Members know that that is a disingenuous stance as it means that every tenant in a Labour-controlled area has no prospect of being able to buy his council house. The evidence is clearly demonstrated by what happened under Labour councils. Virtually no Labour council has sold council houses voluntarily. As a result of the right to buy legislation, any number of council tenants have had the opportunity to buy for the first time.
  Even outside Labour-controlled areas, the Labour Party, having read its policy documents, is committed to removing the options from those tenants who have them and ending sales at discounts.
  Mrs. Ann Taylor: Yes.
  Mr. Stanley: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that confirmation. The Labour Party has also said that it will oblige council tenants to sell their houses back to their councils when they sell. That has been stated clearly. That removes the council tenant's right to sell his house or flat at the price of his own chosing.
  The Bill makes three major extensions to the right to buy. One group that will benefit is those in leasehold property. That will be welcomed strongly by those who live on land that is held on leasehold by the local authority. It is long overdue. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) that the leasehold enfranchisement provisions will apply to houses. That is the reason for the 22-year minimum length of lease for houses.
  I cannot accept Opposition Members' criticisms of the proposals with regard to charitable housing associations. We are simply extending the right to buy to dwellings that have been publicly funded by housing association grant—funded in exactly the same way as dwellings that
  794
  are owned by non-charitable housing associations where the right to buy already exists. It is illogical to allow one tenant in a dwelling that is provided with housing association grant to have the right to buy and to deny that right to a tenant who is living in a house that is funded by housing association grant simply because the latter housing association is constituted as a charity.
  Mrs. Taylor rose—
  Mr. Stanley: I should like to continue.
  Mrs. Taylor: May I make just one point?
  Mr. Stanley: No. I have given way a great deal, and I should like to continue. I understand that some people in the housing association movement are opposed to giving the right to buy to the tenants of charitable housing associations.
  We have heard nothing from Labour Members about the position of tenants themselves. We have heard any number of arguments from those who represent the housing associations as landlords. To redress that balance, I should like to cite one letter that I have received in the last few days—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are not interested in hearing about the position of tenants. I have received a letter from the Dartwood tenants association in Leeds. It reads:
  "Following a meeting of our tenants association, I have been asked to write to you to say we think you should reject the appeals of the charitable housing associations who object to giving their tenants the equivalent right to buy and we would wish you to proceed. We are writing as there will no doubt be considerable pressure to change this. We believe that giving us the right to buy will improve the quality of living".
  No real arguments have been put forward by Opposition Members against this proposal.
  Mrs. Ann Taylor rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister has made it clear that he is not giving way. He must be allowed to proceed. It is the right of any hon. Member to continue, if that is his wish, when he has the floor.
  Mr. Stanley: Another area extended by the Bill is that of shared ownership. My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) asked if the minimum 50 per cent. threshold for a shared ownership sale could be reduced. The threshold can be altered by an order under schedule 5 to the Bill. It is not necessary always to continue with the 50 per cent. threshold.
  The remaining right-to-buy provisions of the Bill deal mainly with ways in which Labour councils have sought to obstruct and to deter tenants from exercising their legal rights. I recall the speech of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) on Second Reading of the 1980 Housing Bill when he purported to give a blow-by-blow account of the obstacle course that was supposed to be going to be created by the Bill and that the tenant would have to complete before he succeeded in exercising his right to buy.
  The real obstacle course for tenants has not been created by the Bill. It has been created by Labour councils that have used every possible device to try to stop or dissuade council tenants from exercising their legal rights. Some Labour councils have engaged in what I can only describe as non-stop harassment of tenants trying to buy their homes. This was revealed vividly in the speeches of my

  795
  hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) and the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright).
  Some of the harassment has taken a petty form, such as refusing to give tenants even the statutory right-to-buy application form, refusing to tell tenants when they have made a trivial mistake in filling in the form and giving the form back to the tenant with no explanation. There are councils that have stopped repairs to homes where tenants have applied to buy. There are councils which say that they will not give their normal discretionary improvement grant to those who have had the nerve to exercise the legal right to buy their homes. There are councils which have deputed members of their staff to try to persuade council tenants to abandon their applications. Happily, they have proved singularly unpersuasive.
  There have been much more serious instances of obstruction with which we shall be dealing in the Bill. There are councils that have refused to process perfectly valid right-to-buy applications. My right hon. and hon. Friends can be assured that in every case that has come to our notice we have made the council proceed with such sales. There are councils that have served invalid completion notices. In one case, the tenant had not even got the legal documents to complete the sale. We shall be dealing with that in the Bill.
  There are councils that have been trying to impose unreasonable service charges and unduly restrictive covenants that would put a former council tenant as a home owner in a worse position, for example in his right to improve his home, than if he had remained a council tenant. We shall return to both those points in the Bill.
  There has also been the singularly odious practice of Norwich city council holding to ransom tenants who wanted exchanges by allowing them to get an exchange only if at the same time they gave up their right to buy. The Bill will make that practice illegal, as the House has been informed. Those forms of obstruction and browbeating are an unacceptable way to treat individual citizens who are simply exercising the legal rights that have been given to them by Parliament.
  Some authorities have treated their tenants unacceptably. I received a letter from a council tenant in Sheffield. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] The letter is telling. The tenant wrote:
  "From the people of Sheffield who have applied for the Right to Buy here is a cry for help. My husband and I put our names forward in November 1980, one month after this had become law and we are still waiting."
  I should like to be able to help that couple to obtain their legal right to own their home. I am ready to do so instantly but I cannot do so because of the next devastating sentence in that lady's letter, which reads as follows:
  "I wish to make this plea anonymous otherwise we may get reprisals and that would make our chances of ever owning the house nil."
  It is a dismal reflection on the Labour Party that people are afraid even to disclose their names when exercising their legal right to buy.
  However, the political enthusiasm of the Labour Party for denying council tenants the right to buy seems to evaporate with remarkable speed when certain individual council tenants who happen to be prominent local members of the Labour Party come to decide as individuals whether they should buy their own houses.
  796
  Over the past two years it has been interesting that the determination of the Labour Party to repeal the right to buy has been exceeded only by the determination of Labour councillors to make certain that as council tenants they buy their houses while Tories are still in Government and the going is good. They produce many interesting reasons for that.
  For example, when the Labour vice-chairman of the housing committee in Swindon applied to buy his council house he decided to put his best foot forward and declared:
  "I am doing the Council a favour by buying my house."
  In Bassetlaw, the Labour chairman of the housing committee, who is strongly opposed to the sale of council houses, was shot down in flames by his admirable wife who declared:
  "Don has his opinions but so have I. I am not having him bringing politics into the house. We discussed the situation, had a vote and Don was outvoted three to one."
  An equally staunch lady emerged in North Tyneside in the person of battling granny, Labour councillor Mrs. Mollie Brown, who when threatened with the sack for buying her council house hit back and said:
  "The rest can resign but I won't."
  She reminded two of her Labour colleagues that they had already bought their council houses 10 years ago.
  Last but by no means least in the rush in the Labour Party to exercise the right to buy we have none other than the election agent at the last general election of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). [HON. MEMBERS: "Hooray."]
  It is clear that even without the extensions of the right to buy in the Bill, our expectations of the demand for the right to buy will be more than fulfilled. By the end of September over 400,000 council, new town and housing association dwellings had passed into home ownership during the Government's period of office. The right to buy is having a dramatically beneficial effect. It is giving council estates greater variety and appeal. It is giving individual families greater housing choice, financial security and mobility.
  The right to buy is one of the most far-reaching and beneficial social revolutions of this century. It needs to be extended still further. The Bill will enable that to be done. I ask the House to give it a Second Reading.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—
  The House divided: Ayes 320, Noes 203.

  Division No. 14]

  [10.00 pm

  AYES

  Adley, Robert

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Blackburn, John

  Alexander, Richard

  Blaker, Peter

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Body, Richard

  Amery, Rt Hon Julian

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Ancram, Michael

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Arnold, Tom

  Bottomley, Peter (W'wich W)

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Bowden, Andrew

  Atkins, Rt Hon H.(S'thorne)

  Boyson, Dr Rhodes

  Atkins, Robert(Preston N)

  Bradley, Tom

  Atkinson, David (B'm'th,E)

  Braine, Sir Bernard

  Baker, Kenneth(St.M'bone)

  Bright, Graham

  Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

  Brinton, Tim

  Banks, Robert

  Brittan, Rt. Hon. Leon

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Brocklebank-Fowler, C.

  Beith, A. J.

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  Bendall, Vivian

  Brotherton, Michael

  Benyon, Thomas (A'don)

  Brown, Michael(Brigg & Sc'n)

  Best, Keith

  Brown, Ronald W. (H'ckn'y S)

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Browne, John (Winchester)

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Bruce-Gardyne, John

  797

  Bryan, Sir Paul

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt. Hon. A.

  Hannam, John

  Buck, Antony

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Budgen, Nick

  Hastings, Stephen

  Bulmer, Esmond

  Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

  Burden, Sir Frederick

  Hawkins, Sir Paul

  Butler, Hon Adam

  Hawksely, Warren

  Carlisle, John (Luton West)

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Heath, Rt Hon Edward

  Cartwright, John

  Heddle, John

  Chalker, Mrs. Lynda

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hicks, Robert

  Churchill, W. S.

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th, S'n)

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

  Holland, Philip (Carlton)

  Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Hooson, Tom

  Clegg, Sir Walter

  Hordern, Peter

  Colvin, Michael

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Cope, John

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldf'd)

  Cormack, Patrick

  Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Corrie, John

  Howells, Geraint

  Costain, Sir Albert

  Hunt, David (Wirral)

  Crawshaw, Richard

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Critchley, Julian

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Crouch, David

  Irvine, Rt Hon Bryant Godman

  Cunningham, G. (Islington S)

  Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)

  Dover, Denshore

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Dunn, Robert (Dartford)

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Durant, Tony

  Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

  Dykes, Hugh

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

  Eden, Rt Hon Sir John

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

  Kitson, Sir Timothy

  Eggar, Tim

  Knight, Mrs Jill

  Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)

  Knox, David

  Eyre, Reginald

  Lang, Ian

  Fairbairn, Nicholas

  Latham, Michael

  Fairgrieve, Sir Russell

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Faith, Mrs Sheila

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Farr, John

  Lee, John

  Fell, Sir Anthony

  Le Marchant, Spencer

  Fenner, Mrs Peggy

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Finsberg, Geoffrey

  Lester, Jim (Beeston)

  Fisher, Sir Nigel

  Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

  Fletcher, A. (Ed'nb'gh N)

  Lloyd, Ian (Havant & W'loo)

  Fletcher-Cooke, Sir Charles

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Loveridge, John

  Forman, Nigel

  Luce, Richard

  Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

  Lyell, Nicholas

  Fox, Marcus

  Lyons, Edward (Bradf'd W)

  Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh

  Mabon, Rt Hon Dr J. Dickson

  Fraser, Peter (South Angus)

  McCrindle, Robert

  Freud, Clement

  Macfarlane, Neil

  Fry, Peter

  MacKay, John (Argyll)

  Gardiner, George (Reigate)

  Macmillan, Rt Hon M.

  Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)

  McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  McQuarrie, Albert

  Ginsburg, David

  Madel, David

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  Major, John

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Marlow, Antony

  Goodhew, Sir Victor

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Marten, Rt Hon Neil

  Gorst, John

  Mates, Michael

  Gow, Ian

  Mawby, Ray

  Gower, Sir Raymond

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Grant, Anthony (Harrow C)

  Mayhew, Patrick

  Grant, John (Islington C)

  Mellor, David

  Gray, Hamish

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Greenway, Harry

  Miller, Hal (B'grove)

  Grieve, Percy

  Mills, Iain (Meriden)

  Griffiths, E.(B'y St. Edm'ds)

  Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)

  Griffiths, Peter Portsm'th N)

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Grimond, Rt Hon J.

  Mitchell, R. C, (Soton Itchen)

  Grist, Ian

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Grylls, Michael

  Moore, John

  Hamilton, Hon A.

  Morris, M. (N'hampton S)

  Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

  Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

  798

  Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

  Smith, Dudley

  Mudd, David

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Murphy, Christopher

  Speller, Tony

  Myles, David

  Spence, John

  Neale, Gerrard

  Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)

  Needham, Richard

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Nelson, Anthony

  Sporat, Iain

  Neubert, Michael

  Squire, Robin

  Newton, Tony

  Stainton, Keith

  Normanton, Tom

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Nott, Rt Hon John

  Stanley, John

  Ogden, Eric

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  Onslow, Cranley

  Steen, Anthony

  Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.

  Stevens, Martin

  Osborn, John

  Stewart, A.(E Renfrewshire)

  Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

  Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)

  Page, Richard (SW Herts)

  Stradling Thomas, J.

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Tapsell, Peter

  Parris, Matthew

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Patten, Christopher (Bath)

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Patten, John (Oxford)

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Pattie, Geoffrey

  Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.

  Pawsey, James

  Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)

  Penhaligon, David

  Thompson, Donald

  Percival, Sir Ian

  Thorne, Neil (Ilford South)

  Peyton, Rt Hon John

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Pitt, William Henry

  Townsend, Cyril D, (B'heath)

  Porter, Barry

  Trippier, David

  Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

  van Straubenzee, Sir W.

  Price, Sir David (Eastleigh)

  Vaughan, Dr Gerard

  Proctor, K. Harvey

  Viggers, Peter

  Pym, Rt Hon Francis

  Waddington, David

  Rathbone, Tim

  Wainwright, R.(Colne V)

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Renton, Tim

  Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Walker, B. (Perth)

  Ridley, Hon Nicholas

  Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir D.

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Waller, Gary

  Rifkind, Malcolm

  Walters, Dennis

  Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

  Ward, John

  Roberts, M. (Cardiff NW)

  Watson, John

  Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

  Wellbeloved, James

  Rodgers, Rt Hon William

  Wells, Bowen

  Roper, John

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

  Wheeler, John

  Rossi, Hugh

  Whitelaw, Rt Hon William

  Rost, Peter

  Whitney, Raymond

  Royle, Sir Anthony

  Wickenden, Keith

  Rumbold, Mrs A. C. R.

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

  Wilkinson, John

  St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.

  Williams, D. (Montgomery)

  Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Wolfson, Mark

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Wrigglesworth, Ian

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Shepherd, Richard

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Shersby, Michael

  Sims, Roger

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  Mr. Carol Mather and

  Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

  Mr. Anthony Berry.

  NOES

  Abse, Leo

  Buchan, Norman

  Adams, Allen

  Callaghan, Rt Hon J.

  Allaun, Frank

  Callaghan, Jim (Midd't'n & P)

  Alton, David

  Campbell, Ian

  Anderson, Donald

  Campbell-Savours, Dale

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Canavan, Dennis

  Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

  Cant, R. B.

  Ashton, Joe

  Carmichael, Neil

  Atkinson, N.(H'gey,)

  Carter-Jones, Lewis

  Bagier, Gordon A.T.

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (H'wd)

  Clarke, Thomas (C'b'dge, A'rie)

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Cocks, Rt Hon M. (B'stol S)

  Bennett, Andrew(St'kp't N)

  Cohen, Stanley

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.

  Booth, Rt Hon Albert

  Cook, Robin F.

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Cowans, Harry

  Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

  Cox, T. (W'dsw'th, Toot'g)

  799

  Craigen, J. M. (G'gow, M'hill)

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Cryer, Bob

  Haynes, Frank

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Cunningham, Dr J. (W'h'n)

  Hogg, N. (E Dunb't'nshire)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Holland, S. (L'b'th, Vauxh'll)

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

  Home Robertson, John

  Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)

  Homewood, William

  Davis, Terry (B'ham, Stechf'd)

  Hooley, Frank

  Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)

  Hoyle, Douglas

  Dewar, Donald

  Hughes, Mark (Durham)

  Dixon, Donald

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Dobson, Frank

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Dormand, Jack

  Janner, Hon Greville

  Dubs, Alfred

  Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  John, Brynmor

  Dunnett, Jack

  Johnson, James (Hull West)

  Eadie, Alex

  Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rh'dda)

  Eastham, Ken

  Jones, Barry (East Flint)

  Edwards, R. (W'hampt'n S E)

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Ellis, R. (NE D'bysh're)

  Kilroy-Silk, Robert

  English, Michael

  Lambie, David

  Ennals, Rt Hon David

  Lamond, James

  Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)

  Leighton, Ronald

  Evans, John (Newton)

  Lestor, Miss Joan

  Ewing, Harry

  Lewis, Arthur (N'ham NW)

  Faulds, Andrew

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Field, Frank

  Litherland, Robert

  Fitch, Alan

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Flannery, Martin

  Lyon, Alexander (York)

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  McCartney, Hugh

  Ford, Ben

  McDonald, Dr Oonagh

  Foulkes, George

  McGuire, Michael (Ince)

  Fraser, J. (Lamb'th, N'w'd)

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

  McKelvey, William

  Garrett, John (Norwich S)

  McMahon, Andrew

  George, Bruce

  McNamara, Kevin

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  McWilliam, John

  Golding, John

  Marks, Kenneth

  Gourlay, Harry

  Marshall, D(G'gow S'ton)

  Graham, Ted

  Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

  Grant, George (Morpeth)

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  Martin, M(G'gow S'burn)

  Hamilton, W. W. (C'tral Fife)

  Mason, Rt Hon Roy

  Hardy, Peter

  Maxton, John

  Harman, Harriet (Peckham)

  Maynard, Miss Joan

  Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

  Meacher, michael

  Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith

  Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

  800

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Snape, Peter

  Morris, Rt Hon C. (O'shaw)

  Soley, Clive

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Spearing, Nigel

  Moyle, Rt Hon Roland

  Spellar, John Francis (B'ham)

  Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Newens, Stanley

  Stallard, A. W.

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Stoddart, David

  O'Halloran, Michael

  Stott, Roger

  O'Neill, Martin

  Strang, Gavin

  Palmer, Arthur

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

  Park, George

  Thomas, Dr R.(Carmarthen)

  Parker, John

  Thorne, Stan (Preston South)

  Parry, Robert

  Tilley, John

  Pavitt, Laurie

  Tinn, James

  Pendry, Tom

  Torney, Tom

  Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

  Urwin, Rt Hon Tom

  Prescott, John

  Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

  Price, C. (Lewisham W)

  Wainwright, E. (Dearne V)

  Race, Reg

  Walker, Rt Hon H. (D'caster)

  Radice, Giles

  Wardell, Gareth

  Rees, Rt Hon M (Leeds S)

  Watkins, David

  Richardson, Jo

  Weetch, Ken

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Welsh, Michael

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  White, Frank R.

  Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

  White, J. (G'gow Pollok)

  Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)

  Whitehead, phillip

  Robertson, George

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

  Willey, Rt Hon Frederick

  Rooker, J. W.

  Williams, Rt Hon A.(S'sea W)

  Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)

  Wilson, Rt Hon Sir H(H'ton)

  Rowlands, Ted

  Winnick, David

  Ryman, John

  Woodall, Alec

  Sever, John

  Woolmer, Kenneth

  Sheerman, Barry

  Wright, Sheila

  Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

  Young, David (Bolton E)

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Short, Mrs Renée

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)

  Mr. Derek Foster and

  Silverman, Julius

  Mr. George Morton.

  Skinner, Dennis

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Bill read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Ordered,
  That, at this day's sitting, the Motion relating to Education may be proceeded with, though opposed, until half past Eleven o'clock or for one and half hours after it has been entered upon, whichever is the later.—[Mr. Lang.]

  Division Lists
  Mr. A. J. Beith: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Division List for the important vote at 10 o'clock last night contains at least two omissions. It omits my name and that of the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Bidwell). I understand that the only way in which the Division List can be corrected, other than months later in the bound volume, is by means of a point of order. Will you examine in due course whether there is not some more efficient and automatic way in which omissions from Division Lists can be corrected in the following day's Hansard? That is particularly important on matters such as this, where there is considerable public interest in whether hon. Members vote.
  Mr. Speaker: I shall look again at the matter. I realise that hon. Members who have taken part in a Division, especially on a major Bill such as we had last night and have had again tonight, want their names correctly recorded.

  HOUSING AND BUILDING CONTROL [MONEY]
  Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
  Ordered,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make further provision with respect to the rights of secure tenants in England and Wales and, in connection therewith, to amend the objects of certain housing associations and housing trusts and to amend the law of England and Wales relating to the supervision of building work, the building regulations and building control, it is expedient to authorise—

  (1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of the administrative expenses of the Secretary of State under that Act and any increase attributable to that Act in the sums so payable under any other enactment;

  (2) the payment out of or into the National Loans Fund or the Consolidated Fund of any increase attributable to that Act in the sums so payable under any other enactment.—[Mr. Lang.]

  Education (Mandatory Awards)
  10.16 pm
  Mr. Phillip Whitehead: I beg to move,
  That the Education (Mandatory Awards) Regulations 1982 (S.I., 1982, No. 954), dated 12th July 1982, a copy of which was laid before this House on 16th July, in the last Session of Paliament, be revoked.
  Labour Members have fulfilled their pledge to bring he regulation to the House after the Government's ignominious defeat in Committee. That is the first time the Government have suffered such a defeat on a statutory instrument since 1980.
  We meet today in a rather more full concourse than on that occasion. I am glad to see so many right hon. and hon. Members here today, some of whom hold, or have held, high office, rectorial and otherwise, in our universities and colleges. I am also glad to see some of the right hon. and hon. Members who were not present in Committee when the Government were defeated. It may well be that they will be able to tell us tonight something in explanation of their absence on that occasion. We noted the absence of the hon. Members for Staffordshire, South-West (Mr. Cormack), Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), Saffron Waldron (Mr. Haselhurst), Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Madel) and Wokingham (Sir W. van Straubenzee). Silence is eloquent—
  Sir William van Strubenzee: May we start by getting the terminology right? It was not a Standing Committee but a Statutory Instruments Committee. That is quite different.
  Mr. Whitehead: At least I was there. The hon. Gentleman was not.
  We are endeavouring to discover why so many Conservative Members chose to be away. In my view, silence is eloquent and absence sometimes makes its presence felt. On that occasion, the Under-Secretary of State was left with his faithful Sancho Panza, the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Pawsey), and little other succour.
  I am heartened by the turn-out tonight. This is an important matter. Nothing has changed since the debate on 26 October, except for the worse. We are now holding the debate in the context of the announcement made in the Queen's Speech about the education mandatory awards for this year. Therefore, in a sense we are now debating two sets of award, not one, although within the rules of order we are discussing those covered by statutory instrument No. 954.
  We must see the debate in the general context of the assault that there has been on higher and further education in Britain under the Government. There are fewer places available. The Association of University Teachers calculates that there are about 20,000 fewer places in the universities over the past three years and the public sector seems braced now for a 14 per cent. fall in numbers on a much shorter time scale. In addition, entry qualifications are rising. Those who share our concern that the marginal student is thus being excluded—the student who has struggled extremely hard to get to university or college—are particularly alarmed.
  There are also fewer grants. Local government cuts have left discretionary grants decimated. In some areas—I draw this curious anomaly to the attention of the Under-Secretary of State and, indeed, to that of the Secretary of State, who I see is putting in a stint, if I may call it that,

  803
  on the Front Bench—students who have been refused a local education authority discretionary grant for a local course go elsewhere, if they have the necessary academic qualifications, for a more expensive mandatory award. That is a greater expense to the community and has happened because of the foolish cutback in local education authority discretionary awards.
  The other matter which we are more particularly discussing today is the hardship suffered by students on mandatory grants. They have had an extremely hard time from the Under-Secretary of State. He is known in his Department by the acronym PUSS. In this pantomime, he has been "Puss in Boots", indeed, because he has trodden all over the students. He has a reputation as a nice and humane man and, on the whole, that is deserved, but, in the arguments with the National Union of Students last year and this year, the great difficulty has been to persuade him of the levels of hardship which are being suffered at present.
  What is the position at the moment? The real level of the student grant has fallen, is falling and will continue to fall for the next academic year. It now stands at about 90 per cent. of its value when the Government came to office. I have to concede the fact that in other areas where recipients of Government largesse—if I can so miscall it—are involved, there has been an attempt to make up and replace some of the real value that has been lost over the past few years. The students have not had the benefit of that.
  Figures have been provided for me by the Library. The figures for 1982–83, expressed at constant 1979 prices, show that there was a real increase in the value of the pension but a real decrease in the value of the student grants of about 2·8 per cent.—2·6 per cent. for those in London. The Government are doing something about that. They are going to claw back a good deal of the substantial gain that the pensioners might have made, but there will be no need to claw back anything from the students because there is nothing there to claw back.
  The students have been cheated out of the support that they should have had from the Government, not only this year and last year but they can look ahead and see that it is true for the next academic year and the one after that. The freezing of the minimum level of parental contribution—the threshold—at £6,600 dragged in about another 20,000 paying parents in this academic year. That figure was conceded by the Under-Secretary of State in the debate on the statutory instrument upstairs. The evidence shows that a number of those parents, and many others in the higher categories, do not pay up. Those parents do not provide for their children the amount of money they need to survive at university. The student goes short.
  According to the calculations of the National Union of Students—the figures are disputed only in the smallest percentage terms when Government apologists address themselves to the problem—about 70 per cent. of parents pay none or only part of what they should pay to their student offspring. Tonight, I have received details of a student at Westfield college who has had to give up her course because she has received none of her adjudged parental contribution for this academic year. This is particularly hard on those whose relations with their
  804
  parents for one reason or another—it does not necessarily mean antagonism between parents and offspring—are difficult.
  A constituent of mine in Derbyshire has waited for more than a month for the payment of his mandatory grant by the local education authority because of confusion over what his parents should be paying. This is a double bind for the student. He is caught because he is not receiving the contribution from his parents, but, quite often, because there is confusion about what that contribution should be, his local education authority award is being paid late. Pressure has been put on the ability of the LEAs to pay, and all too often they have held back in the payment of mandatory grants. Therefore, there is a double hardship for the students concerned.
  Thirdly and finally in this area of hardship, there are fees. The Department of Education and Science set its grant for this academic year at 4 per cent.—well below the retail price index—and ignored the hard evidence that many college fees would be set above the RPI. The figures have not been challenged and they suggest that, apart from the extraordinary and anomalous case of Wolverhampton polytechnic, which has levied an increase of 38 per cent., there have been increases in fees of 35 per cent. at St. Andrew's, 20 per cent. at Leeds, 16 per cent. at the Royal Holloway college, 10 per cent. at Newcastle polytechnic, 10 per cent. at North Staffordshire polytechnic, and as much as 18 per cent. in the public sector at Coventry polytechnic. These are sharp increases.
  Account must also be taken of the fact that many students are living in holiday towns and seaside towns, where they enjoy no protection as rent-paying tenants. The rents that they are paying have been increased far beyond the rise in the RPI. Students have suffered real hardship in this respect.
  Mr. Ivan Lawrence: Bearing in mind the validity of the catalogue of hardship that the hon. Gentleman is outlining and the fact that we are faced with the necessity to curb the growth of public expenditure, can I rely upon him to support my motion, should it be reached on Friday, that calls for the introduction of student loans?
  Mr. Whitehead: No. The hon. and learned Gentleman will be disappointed in that as in much else from me. I do not wish to be drawn into discussing student loans because it is an issue which, to some degree, is outside the general tenor of the regulations. However, it is my view that student loans will act as a disincentive to the sort of students whom we wish to encourage into the State system of education. The hon. and learned Gentleman should bear in mind the fact that there has been a long tradition of opposition to the imposition of a student loan scheme on the Conservative Benches. I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Wokingham, for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) and others for taking that stance. Such a scheme would cause hardship for "marginal" students, the ones who are finding it especially hard to get by. That is almost the unanimous view of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and so it should be.
  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Does my hon. Friend agree that the major problem for students in the past was that they could not manage on their grants and so they had to work during their vacations? They now have

  805
  even smaller grants and, because of the Government's policy, they have virtually no opportunity to get work to supplement their grants.
  Mr. Whitehead: I appreciate my hon. Friend's argument. The Secretary of State, who is with us in the flesh, has erred in telling students—it is fine advice from him—that they should find part-time jobs. One of the occupants of the Social Democratic Party's Bench—he is the only SDP member in his place tonight—has said that there are 3·5 million reasons why students cannot get part-time jobs. I refer to the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham). That is the answer to the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) and I am obliged to him for intervening.
  The Government have been warned time after time of the consequences of their actions. During the stewardship of the Secretary of State's predecessor, the right hon. and learned Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle), it seemed that the Government had come to grasp the nature of the problem and the need for some concession to be made. The right hon. and learned Gentleman wrote to the then president of the National Union of Students, David Aaronvitch, on 15 June 1981, after a protest had been made by the students,
  "If, as you suggest, these estimates result in an underestimate of the true cost of students because of rises in hall fees and other students' costs then I would hope that we could take this into account when we come, during the course of next year, to assess students' grants for the academic year 1982–83."
  After that announcement—there were further changes in the Government and a general hardening of attitudes—the awards for 1982–83 were announced. Not only the students, but the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals was so horrified by the evidence of possible hardship, that it wrote to the Secretary of State:
  "We are astonished that the decision regarding the grant for 1982–83 was taken before the results of the Committee's annual survey of board and lodging costs could be made available to the Department and before the customary meeting could be arranged between Ministers and representatives of the committee … On the basis of information provided by universities it is estimated that in the current year the grant is already 18 per cent. below the level which would be needed to enable students to meet the cost of ordinary maintenance including the economic cost of board and lodging. The 4 per cent. increase in grants for 1982–83, which is 6 per cent. below the Government's own estimate of inflation in the coming year is bound to lead to considerable financial hardship for students."
  What response did that receive? Almost none. What attempt has there been to honour the pledge given by the right hon. and learned Member for Runcorn to the president of the National Union of Students more than one year ago? Absolutely none. What independent assessment has the Department of Education and Science made of student costs, whether the student lives at home or away? The answer appears to be "Very little".
  The Under-Secretary of State was unmoved. He told students on 11 August this year that there was no question of an increase in the student award for the academic year 1982–83. He told us in Committee:
  "No one would claim that the student settlement which we were able to make for 1982–83 was generous."
  It is not generous. The best that he could say was that during the past 10 years the away student award had dropped by 3·7 per cent. outside London, while the home student was
  806
  "better off than the youngster without a job living at home on supplementary benefit."—[Official Report, Fifth Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c., 26 October 1982; c. 6–10.]
  That is great news. The response to it from the student body would be "Thanks, but no thanks". It is not good enough, and it is not good enough for the Under-Secretary of State to repeat such arguments today.
  The debate has rolled on. We are not only considering the regulations covered in the instrument for 1982–83 but we are considering them with the benefit of our knowledge of the hardship that will be caused by a grant increase of 4 per cent. for the next academic year after that. That is 4 per cent. for the one-third of students who receive full mandatory grants. Many other students must suffer a net loss. The parental threshold increased by 8 per cent., but that simply freezes the injustice of last year when the threshold was jammed. The number of students' parents who are assessed will stay at about its historical high of 240,000, out of 340,000 students who receive some form of mandatory grant.
  I also wish to ask the Under-Secretary of State about the proposed travel allowance, mentioned in the various statements made in the debates on the Loyal Address, as part of the package for students in the coming year. I am profoundly suspicious of calculations for a travel allowance that may penalise students who live away from home but who must travel to their place of study. We know that the Secretary of State is considering—the matter was aired again in circles close to him—a cut in the number of students who are studying away from home. All that I wish to hear from the Minister tonight is that the new travel regulations are not a means of bringing in that proposition by stealth. Many people, especially in the National Union of Students, believe that to be true.
  The National Union of Students asked for £5 a week to return to 1980–81 levels in real terms. They are receiving an increase of 24p a day as a result of the regulations to be promulgated following the announcement. It also asked for an increase in the means-tested threshold to £9,000, which would release about 60,000 parents from the need to contribute a proportion of the financial support of their offspring.
  There has been no real response to those proposals or to the students' demands, which I personally welcome and endorse, that an allowance of £25 per week should be paid to all students in non-advanced further education. Those students have been most severely hit by the local education authority squeeze on financial support and by the imbalance in favour of degree courses and other advanced further education that has always existed in the system in this country.
  The hon. Member for Cambridge is muttering in a confused fashion. Does he wish to intervene? It seems that he does not.
  We shall have to judge the Government's performance on what they have already said and what the Minister says today about their approach to student support. In our view, their approach has been consistently mean-spirited throughout the past few years. They have made the gaining of entry into higher and further education harder and they have ensured that more people are squeezed out when they get there. As always, the cost falls on the marginal student who has struggled the hardest to qualify and now has to struggle the hardest to survive.

  807
  We shall be voting to revoke the regulations because we recognise them for what they are—one more step on the road to increased elitism in education, where those who already have receive support, those who might have can seek loans, and those who have nothing but aspiration and effort to offer are shown the back of a lengthening queue. In doing so, we shall be voting for wider categories of student support and not only for justice for existing students whose support is inadequate. I hope that hon. Members of all parties will join us in the Lobby.
  10.36 pm
  The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. William Waldegrave): We seem to have these debates in duplicate. We have a small debate upstairs with the SDP, which seems to understand the procedures of the House and gets to the prayer first. Then we have a later, bigger debate on the Floor of the House for the Labour Party to catch up.
  During the moving and jolly speech of the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead), my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) was by no means muttering in a confused way. He was muttering in a very exact way that the hon. Gentleman's speech was typical of a former chairman of the Oxford Conservative Association. In a sense, that was perhaps a rather offensive sally from my hon. Friend. However, we hope that some day the hon. Member for Derby, North will return to his former allegiance, although I predict that there will be a passage through a party sitting below the Gangway on the way.
  In the casual way that is possible when in Opposition, the hon. Member for Derby, North spent about £700 million in his speech. That is the luxury of Opposition, which we shall do our best to ensure that he enjoys for as long as possible. Nevertheless, we must consider this matter in the general context of the country's economic situtation.
  We are primarily concerned today with the education regulations for 1982 and the grant settlement for the academic year 1982–83. Since we discussed the matter last December, when the rates were first announced, the whole context in which we are discussing it has changed dramatically because of the toughness shown by the Government in relation to public expenditure. At that time, we feared—we did not try to hide this—that the real drop in the value of the award in 1982 as compared with 1981 would be about 6 per cent. because the inflation prediction was 10 per cent. Happily, that prediction has proved false and with inflation now around 7 per cent. the real drop in value that we feared will be very much less.
  Mr. Dennis Canavan: It is still a drop.
  Mr. Waldegrave: We have the Government's undertaking to control public expenditure to thank for that change from which students and everyone else have benefited.
  In the interests of securing a stable economy for the well-being of all, we saw no reason why students in the 18-plus age group, who are still the best treated of their age group, should be wholly exempted from the pressures on public expenditure that others have had to face.
  808
  The full-time student of 18-plus is still by far the best treated of his age group. The hon. Member for Derby, North was kind enough to quote comparisons that I had given before with those people on other forms of Government support. That tells only a small part of the story, because that student at university or polytechnic institute is having large sums from the public purse spent on free tuition. That might cost up to £10,000 a place for a medical student and £4,000 a place for the average student.
  Mr. Barry Sheerman: How many aspiring students are there from towns like the hon. Gentleman's and mine who would like to be in the privileged position about which he is boasting compared with three years ago?
  Mr. Waldegrave: If the hon. Gentleman will restrain his enthusiasm. I shall shortly tell him. The answer may be not quite what he expects.
  The decline in the rate of inflation has meant that the award has not fallen by as much as we feared. If one takes the index 10 years ago, from 1972–73, the value of the London award has increased. With the 1972–73 index at 100, the London award is now worth 106 and the present value of the elsewhere award is 96. That has dropped, but the Opposition's catastrophic language does not reflect the reality of the position.
  There have been interesting cases before the courts involving European students seeking to come here to gain support from our mandatory award system through one loophole or another. Our student award system is the most generous of any European country.
  The hon. Member for Derby, North asked about participation rates. The figures for the academic year 1982–83 will show that there is no evidence that the level of the student award has deterred students from seeking higher education places. The final figure for the participation rate for 1981–82—the figures are just coming out—will show that it is the highest ever, at 13·2 per cent. The figures will, moreover, show that the qualified participation rate is the highest ever at 87·9 per cent. We have done better in finding places for students than the Labour Government did, and that should calm the worries of the hon. Member for Derby, North.
  Mr. Whitehead: If the Government are doing so much better, how is it that in answer to me on 8 March this year the hon. Gentleman suggested that the age participation rate would fall to 91·7 per cent. in the academic year after that and 11·2 per cent. for 1984–85. Where is the triumph in that?
  Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman can keep to the out-of-date figures if he likes, but I can improve on best estimates by giving the facts. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will prefer the facts. He will find that the participation rate this year will not have fallen, so he should not worry.
  There has been a limitation on university places undertaken by the UGC to preserve the research output of universities. Despite the pressure on the recurrent grants of the local authority institutions, those institutions have managed to take in large numbers of students, which perhaps shows that there must have been some slack in the system before. The Robbins principle has therefore been maintained.
  Mr. Christopher Price: The Under-Secretary gave evidence to the Select Committee that the age participation rate was declining, according to the figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) has just given. Is he now saying that the age participation rate is declining, and is he using a different formula—the qualifying participation rate—to try to get out of it?
  Mr. Waldegrave: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not understand the relationship between the age participation rate and the qualified particiption rate. In those figures we were predicting—under the pressure of the savings that we had to make out of local authority colleges—how we thought they would be able to respond. There was much more room for students in those colleges than we had predicted and they have followed the age profile round. I am therefore able to comfort the hon. Member for Huddersfield, East (Mr. Sheerman) by saying that the Robbins principle has been maintained—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Reality may not seem possible to Labour Members, but reality sometimes breaks in upon them.
  Labour Members may be interested in some of the detailed changes, some of which are important. In addition to the increases in the main rates, we have been able to respond to a number of representations. For example, we responded to the National Bureau for Handicapped Students, and increased the allowance for disabled students in schedule 2, paragraph 15, from £250 to £500.
  Mr. Sheerman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I understand that the Minister wants to get through this embarrassing speech as quickly as possible, but he is rattling through it at such a pace that Back Benchers cannot understand one syllable.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Paul Dean): The hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a point of order on which I can rule.
  Mr. Waldegrave: In case I was going too fast for the hon. Member, I shall read that sentence again, but this time more slowly. As a result of representations from the National Bureau for Handicapped Students, the allowance for disabled students was doubled from £250 to £500. Furthermore, the allowance for dependants was substantially increased, not only by the percentage increase in supplementary benefit but by £70 in respect of each dependant child.
  As well as an allowance of £140 per child under 11 years of age, there was an allowance in the 1981–82 academic year of £365 per child aged 11 to 16, and £580 for a child aged 17 and over. We have increased those. There have been a number of improvements in other rates of grant. For example, by an amendment to the 1981 regulations, refugees and "asylees" who had interrupted, without completing, their studies abroad during the 12 months immediately preceding their entry to the United Kingdom, were given exemption from the previous study rules. In response to representations from the World University Service and the British Refugee Council, the 1982 regulations increased the 12 month period to four years. That was generally welcomed.
  The provisions contained in article 3.2 were amended to provide that a period during which a student—
  Mr. Sheerman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Minister is now speaking so slowly that he is trying to squeeze out Back Benchers who wish to participate in the one hour of the debate that remains.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: It would be better if we were to allow the Minister to continue. I remind the House that many hon. Members hope to speak and the debate must end at 11.46 pm. I therefore hope that interruptions will be brief.
  Mr. Waldegrave: It may not appear so to the hon. Gentleman, but matters such as refugee status are of some importance. The improvements that we have been able to make should be of some satisfaction to those concerned with these matters.
  There have been a number of other improvements. For example, the provisions of article 3·2(d) of the 1981 regulations allow a period spent by a married student caring for a dependent child to count towards the attainment of independent status. These were extended so that any student who has the care of a dependent under the age of 18 can benefit under the regulations.
  There are other improvements, but, lest I should irritate the hon. Member for Huddersfield, East even further, I shall not repeat them. This shows how wrong are the charges that there is an animus against students among Conservatives. We have taken care to respond to a number of specific recommendations and representations—
  Mr. Whitehead: From rich students.
  Mr. Waldegrave: I have been talking about "asylees" and refugees. The hon. Gentleman trivialises an important debate.
  Another matter that should be reported to the House derives from the intervention of the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) who, unlike the hon. Member for Huddersfield, East (Mr. Sheerman), takes an interest in the regulations. In one important aspect, he has made sure that we have improved them further. I refer to the relief for life assurance. After correspondence with the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury, we agreed that it would be sensible to bring the treatment of life assurance premiums into line with revenue calculations of netted income.
  We made a change in the regulations from last year. The hon. Gentleman wrote to me first, saying that he thought that we had got it right. It turns out that we have drafted it incorrectly. We shall therefore introduce amending regulations so that local authorities may be clear about the matter. We are informed that they will be able to continue to do what they are now doing. We will then have to consider the matter further for next year and introduce more amendments so that the situation is as both the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury and the Government want it—properly in line with the taxation authorities. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman as he has ensured that we have significantly improved the regulations.
  The heat and passion generated in an election year to promise that [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh".] I must correct myself. The heat and passion generated in what may be an election year by all the Opposition parties to gather in a useful lobby is blatant. I know that £600 million or so, which is the cost of the £25 per person allowance, is just

  811
  small change compared with the sort of money that the Labour Party is talking about, but we must remember that we are talking about the real world.
  We are trying to take the higher education system and an increased number of students through a period of severe world recession. We are proud that we are maintaining a high number of students in the higher education system. We believe that that must demonstrate that the grant is reasonably adequate. Nobody is under any misapprehension but that there are problems for those students who do not receive the parental contribution. I urge parents to make those contributions.
  Mr. Whitehead: As the hon. Gentleman suggests that the Opposition want to splash money on people who do not get any grant for non-advanced further education, will he tell the House whether he is satisfied about the lack of support that people in those deserving categories get? I think that he is not.
  Mr. Waldegrave: If there were £600 million to spend without damaging important priorities elsewhere, this would be one serious candidate. It is the luxury of Oppositions to be able to spend the same money on everything. No doubt it comes from the cancellation of Trident yet again.
  No doubt the Opposition will shed many crocodile tears tonight. We will hear of students who suffer hardship. There may be a few. There were a few under the regime of the Labour Government. The House can be assured that within the constraints of the resources that are available, a reasonable deal on student awards has been laid before the House. I can ask my hon. Friends and some of those Opposition Members on whom reality may still impinge to vote for the regulations with every confidence.
  10.53 pm
  Mr. David Steel: The Under-Secretary of State began his speech with a rather feeble jest at the expense of Opposition parties. Unfortunately, he never seemed to recover his composure.
  The speech to which we have listened was a mixture of levity and complacency throughout. It is a great pity that nowhere did there appear a tinge of regret or a note of penitence about the blatant reneging, for example, on the undertaking that was given by the Secretary of State on the level of grants being reviewed if the level of inflation was found to be much higher than the level of grant.
  All of that has been abandoned and now, to add insult to injury, before the House has the chance to debate the 1982–83 level of grant, we have a unilateral announcement of the level for 1983–84 without even the normal courteous meeting that has been held by successive Administrations with the National Union of Students.
  Like the Under-Secretary of State, I wish to refer to our procedures. Nearly four months have elapsed since my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Liberal and Social Democratic Parties tabled the prayer against the regulations. Yet the regulations are now in force despite the defeat of the Government in the Committee. Hon. Members should take note of this defect in our procedures. If a statutory instrument is defeated in a Committee charged by the House to examine it, there should be an
  812
  automatic right to a debate on the Floor of the House. There should be no further argument between the parties and the Whips. We should review our procedures.
  In my capacity as rector of Edinburgh university, I received a petition on Monday signed by 3,000 students at the university on this issue. My remarks are not based solely on my experience at Edinburgh, which is direct and continuous, but on visits that I have made to six other universities in the last few weeks. I do not know what is the experience of the Under-Secretary or the Secretary of State, but I find a genuine sense of grievance among the student population about the level of grant. It is not, as the Under-Secretary suggests, that the student population believes that it should be exempt, privileged, or above the sacrifices made by the rest of the country.
  The undergraduate population, so far as I can make out, is willing to share the sacrifices, but figures debated in Committee, which will no doubt be produced again in this debate, show that students are being asked to accept an excessive reduction in their standard of living compared with some others in our society. There is a parallel with the National Health Service workers. In both cases, groups of people in our society who are less well off than others are being squeezed under the alleged non-incomes policy of the Government.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) read out in Committee the letter, to which the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) has referred, from the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals. The committee comprises people who are reasonably remunerated but who have a feeling for their students. If the Under-Secretary is to dismiss the concern expressed by hon. Members, he cannot surely dismiss concern expressed by the committee about the real reduction in living standards suffered by the student population.
  Student grants are now worth in real terms only 81 per cent. of what they were in my own time in 1962. The 1983–84 determination has been made. With inflation coming down—we hope that this continues—the gap between the inflation rate and the grant rate next year will not be so wide. There is, however, no attempt to recompense the student population for the severe fall experienced this time.
  The real fall in the cost of living affects issues such as the mortgage rate. Few students benefit from that. The real cost of living index of the student population—books, fees, student lodgings and private lodgings—is much higher than the standard cost of living rate. The University of Edinburgh says that, although it has done its best to keep down the level of hall residence fee, the increase has been 12 per cent. this year. There is a gap between the grant level and what the Government will accept as the real cost of living for students.
  There is another big difference between the plight of the student today and that of the student of my time 20 years ago. In my time at Edinburgh university, I did at least five different vacation jobs. Time is too short for me to expand on that statement. There is no prospect today of a student having the opportunity every year, without fail, to get employment. It would be outrageous if they did, because of the state of unemployment. Therefore, the opportunity for today's student to supplement what is a basic subsistence grant with vacation work is severely limited. The Government should take that into account.

  813
  I remind the Government what they said in their manifesto at the last election:
  "Much of our higher education in Britain has a world-wide reputation for its quality. We shall seek to ensure that this excellence is maintained."
  One of the first things that the Government did was to increase the level of overseas student fees so that our world-wide reputation was immediately dented. Now, apart from the cuts in university expenditure, life has been made extremely difficult for the student population.
  The Secretary of State's latest suggestion is that students should try to borrow the money. One of the things that slightly worries me about the banking system is that there is a great deal of pressure on new students to join certain banks. All sorts of free offers are made. However, no bank in its senses will consider lending large sums of money to undergraduates when not even graduates are certain of getting jobs so that they can pay back the loans. Therefore, the idea of moving to even an unofficial loan system, let alone the official one on which the Secretary of State is speculating, is not even a starter.
  I and my colleagues will firmly oppose any attempt by the Government to move from the traditional grant system to a loan system for the reason not that it would affect about two thirds of the student population, but that it would affect lower income families, who would be terrified of taking on such a loan. As north of the border we have an egalitarian tradition in higher education, we would resent any change to a loan system.
  In the meantime, faced with the belated opportunity that the House has to deal with the current level of grant for this academic year, we should join as many hon. Members as we can muster in the Lobby against the regulations.
  11.2 pm
  Sir William van Straubenzee: I shall comment on the concluding remarks of the right hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) in a moment. First, I shall say a word or two about why we are debating this subject at this time. We had better get the record clear. It is important that we should.
  We are debating regulations that are already operating. We know perfectly well that if we were to upset them that would cause chaos in education. Normally we would have debated such a matter in the summer. The reason why we did not do so was the sheer concentrated incompetence of the Labour Front Bench. Labour Members are the nicest set of people. They are some of the most delightful Members of the House, but as an Opposition in educational terms—and I have sat in the House for some years—
  Mr. Sheerman: Too long.
  Sir William van Straubanzee: We can deal with that matter next time.
  I have never experienced an Opposition who have missed so many educational tricks. The truth is that they failed to put down a Prayer at the right time. That is why we are now debating the regulations at the wrong time.
  We get a good idea of the Opposition's approach to education when we learn that the hon. Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Kinnock), having done so well in his election, is to be promoted from education. He is to go up. It is a sad commentary on the subject that that is the approach.
  814
  There is no group of people that benefit more from a successful economic policy that controls the increase in the rate of inflation, making it something manageable, than the student population. Students benefit directly from the successes that are so irritating to the Opposition. The House knows my commitment to this subject, but even those who are committed to it cannot seek to exempt the student population from the general effort necessary—some of it painful—to control the increase in inflation. Hon. Members should remember that inflation still exists. Some hon. Members almost suggest that there is no inflation, although it still exists at an infinitely more acceptable rate. That is of great benefit to those such as students who often have to live on very modest incomes.
  I do not disguise the fact that I was dismayed that we did not make any improvement in the scales of parental contributions in this academic year. Unwittingly, we hit hard at a deserving group of parents. Their efforts to get their sons or daughters into higher or further education are considerable. Therefore, I warmly welcome the statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 8 November, implying that that process will be resumed in the forthcoming year. We may argue about percentages. but the percentage is considerable. Therefore, I whole-heartedly welcome that resumption.
  Mr. Sheerman: May I bring the hon. Gentleman down to earth and refer him to the ordinary people who send their children to universities and polytechnics? Will he balance a slightly lower rate of inflation against the fact that between June and October students have no chance of earning any money in the economy that the Prime Minister and the Government preside over?
  Sir William van Straubenzee: It is astonishing that an hon. Member—let alone an Opposition Member—could talk about a "slightly lower" rate of inflation. The fall has been dramatic.
  Mr. Sheerman: What was the rate of inflation in May 1979?
  Sir William van Straubenzee: I am answering the hon. Gentleman's point. The Government that he supported passed on a rate of inflation—and we all know the delay in such matters—that rose at one point to 20 per cent.
  Mr. Sheerman: What about the rate in May 1979?
  Sir William van Straubenzee: That rate of inflation did much to undermine the problems and difficulties of those on small incomes. It does not lie in the hon. Gentleman's mouth to raise that issue. I hope that he is taking the debate seriously.
  I shall try to be brief, because I know that many hon. Members wish to speak. I understand the problem of the parental contribution and of that part of it that may not be met by a parent. In a free society, it is extraordinarily difficult to find a method of enforcing payment other than via the total abolition of any means-tested benefit. I am sorry that we never moved—I suppose that we now never will—to the tax credit system which, we should remember, was vigorously opposed by the Labour Party. Had we done so, we could have incorporated in it a system of student finance which might have been more effective.
  Finally, I take up the words of the right hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles. I am glad—I can claim to speak only for myself, but I suspect that I speak also for

  815
  others—that there are no proposals in these regulations for providing student support by way of loan, in whole or in part. I shall make two comments in this regard. Those who advocate a system of loan should first identify clearly whether that loan should bear a full commercial rate of interest. If it should bear that full commercial rate of interest at compound rates, with an appropriate period between graduation and repayment, I beg hon. Gentlemen on both sides to calculate the size of the burden which they then impose on the graduate. If they say "No, I do not propose to do that. I propose that it should be a special or an underpinned rate of interest", let them reflect that they are thereby financially assisting the best-off families. In a rich family there will be no other member of that unit who can borrow at specially privileged rates.
  Secondly, I would like to know, with much greater clarity than I have heard, the method of recovery. It is sometimes said that one could use the country's banking system. We know—I remember it 10 years ago, and the situation is the same today—that the banking system of this country will not undertake that unless the Treasury underpins the loan. If the loan is underpinned, that is a resource that is committed, and a resource committed is increased expenditure. Thus, those who advocate this system may well find, contrary to what they suppose, that they are committing the Government to increase expenditure.
  If it is not to be done through the national banking system, I shudder at the thought of a university loans board, a polytechnic loans board, or a University of Leeds loans board, and the problems of recovery. I ask those who advocate this scheme to think carefully before putting it into a manifesto.
  My commitment is this. I believe that one of the remarkable features of student support in this country is that when we expanded it massively in the 1960s-it will always be associated with my noble Friend Viscount Eccles—and provided student support, a far wider social group of student used it and had access to it than would have happened if we had not had such student support. Any hon. Member on these Benches would tamper with it at their peril.
  11.13 pm
  Mr. S. C. Silkin: I agree with the hon. Member for Wokingham (Sir W. van Straubenzee) on at least one point and that is his criticism of the concept of student loans, which was also voiced by the right hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel), the leader of the Liberal Party. Their fears can probably now be set well at rest in the light of the Prime Minister's panegyric the other day. With families being urged to live within their means, even a radical figure such as the Secretary of State is unlikely to have his way on student loans.
  I do not propose to follow the forceful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) on the Government's general parsimony in an area where one would have hoped and expected that of all others investment should be at the highest level and at an increasing level if we are to resume the place in the world which we all wish to enjoy.
  I shall deal only with a relatively narrow matter which arises under the regulations where I regret that the
  816
  Government have palpably failed to put right what seems to me to be a grave defect and one which is likely to create considerable hardship.
  The House will know that the basis of the mandatory grant has always been founded upon the concept of ordinary residence, which was satisfactory in the days when ordinary residence was understood to mean ordinary residence. Alas, today, indeed even since a year or so ago, that concept has changed as a result of a Court of Appeal decision, although it is still for the other place to overrule it if they wish to.
  I wish to illustrate the hardship that is caused as a result of the change in the way the law is looked upon, subject to the House of Lord's decision, by reference to one case which came to me recently in my constituency.
  That is the case of a family—a husband and wife and two grown up daughters—who came to Britain from South Africa—the wife and the daughters many years ago, the husband more recently. They are of Asian extraction and, like many people of that race, they are hard-working and conscientious. The husband did extremely well in South Africa and built up a considerable business.
  Unhappily, the South African Government decided that the area where this family's business was situated would become a whites only area. As a result of that, the business, which should have been worth a great deal of money, became virtually worthless.
  The parents, whose children were then quite young, decided that they would not allow their children to grow up in such a society and they decided there and then that they would come to Britain. The father started his business up again and before long he had built up sufficient capital to enable his wife and two young daughters to come to Britain. The wife thus had sufficient independent means to be allowed to remain and the children, being the age they were, were allowed to stay on annual visitors' permits.
  The father stayed in South Africa and continued to build up his business until he was in a position to sell up and come here himself as a person with sufficient means to enable the whole family to live in Britain. The children did well at school and last year one applied for and obtained a grant to enable her to take a university place. But her younger sister—one year younger—this year, having done exceptionally well at school, applied for a grant to go to a teaching hospital as a medical student. She was informed that, as a result of the recent decision of the courts, she could not be regarded as a person whose ordinary residence was in this country. I can think of nothing more scandalous. Where was her ordinary residence if not in this country? Was it in South Africa, from which her parents and family had departed deliberately because of the circumstances that I have related to the House? If it was not in South Africa, where was it? If it was not in this country where the family had decided to come to live out the rest of their lives, where was it?
  When I see the provisions of these regulations which do enable the concept of ordinary residence to be displaced, to be given a different meaning from the one the courts give it, to the benefit of the nationals of members of the European Community and I do not see the case to which I have referred being dealt with with any sympathy, I feel that there has been a grave dereliction of duty on the part of the Government. Before the regulations were promulgated they should have known of the decisions that were being made and the narrow way in

  817
  which the concept of ordinary residence was being construed, and the effect of that narrow concept upon the rights of people in this country to receive a mandatory grant.
  Mr. Christopher Price: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the whole matter stems from the Government's decision under the predecessor of the Secretary of State simply to leave to the courts—what has turned out to be the caprice of the courts over nearly two years—this important decision that should have been settled by proper legislation when the overseas students' fees were first introduced?
  Mr. Silkin: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. If the courts are going to make a concept such as that of ordinary residence, which by itself is a perfectly simple expression that any layman could translate in ordinary terms, into a term of art with a narrow meaning, it is time for the Government of the day to stop the inevitable hardship which meant that one daughter was able to obtain a grant to go to university while the other, a year younger, was unable to be trained as a doctor in one of our great medical schools.
  I hope that note will be taken of this and that the Government will look seriously into this matter. It needs only minor modification to put that type of hardship right. I very much hope that that modification before long will be made.
  11.23 pm
  Mr. Tony Marlow: I wish to speak briefly on one aspect of the regulations about which I believe there is some common ground. I refer to parental contributions. I say common ground, because even my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will have some sympathy with the points that I am about to make.
  The House decided in the past that at the age of 18 people reach adult life. At the age of 18, a person can vote, he can fight for his country and, as we have recently discovered, he can even die for his country. At the age of 18, he can have been married for two years. But if at the age of 18 he decides to go to university, he is suddenly categorised as being dependent on his parents. That is absurd, archaic, unjust and most unfair.
  If 10,000, 50,000 or 100,000 people were involved in this anomaly, perhaps we could sustain and put up with it, but the facts are that each year 340,000 students are assessed for parental contribution. On the basis that they have just under two parents each, and including themselves. a million of our citizens are touched by this monstrosity.
  I sometimes wonder what Governments think the citizens of this country do with their free time. Not only is one involved each year in filling in tax forms for the Inland Revenue. Not only are many private individuals and small business men involved in filling up VAT returns for the dreaded Customs and Excise, but also many of our people—340,000 groups of parents—are visited each year by the star chamber of the local authority, which again goes through their personal affairs and again asks them to itemise their income, their expenses, their mortgages and every detail of their financial affairs. Not only does it ask them to do that but they have to justify and sustain everything that they have put on that piece of paper. They have to go through their filing systems and find out how
  818
  their affairs have been conducted in the previous year yet again. That is the administration that we foist upon our people.
  But as well as that there is the tax, the cost. We all know that on marginal income we are talking about £1 in £7, but it is not that at all. That is because most people on marginal income have already paid 39 per cent. national insurance and income tax, so it is £1 in every £4 of marginal income that is taken away from people in this parental contribution.
  Mr. George Cunningham: That is not true.
  Mr. Marlow: Does the hon. Gentleman wish to intervene?
  Mr. Cunningham: No
  Mr. Marlow: I will be accurate, actually. I have done a calculation on this. It is £1 in £4·27, so I am slightly wrong, but it is more or less what I said. I am glad that the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) and I are in accord.
  Mr. Frank Hooley: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Marlow: I will not, because so many hon. Members want to speak. I am not giving way. The group of people to whom I refer are in many other respects hit by Government, and this has an effect on families. In some cases, of course, it is the only child who is at university, but many of these families have other children, so on their marginal income they are paying this massive impost when they have families to bring up. In many respects they are the least well off in society.
  What is worse than the impost on parents is the effect on students. It divides our student community into two groups—those who receive the full grant, perhaps including the full parental contribution, and those who do not. There are 240,000 students each year who are deemed to be in receipt of parental contribution. The hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) has said that perhaps 70 per cent. of those do not receive their parental contribution, or at any rate do not receive it in full. That gives us a figure of 175,000 students. Half the student body in higher education is not in receipt of full parental contribution.
  There are those whose parents do not get on with them and who are not going to make up the money. There are those whose parents have commitments to other children, perhaps in private education. There are those who have large families and who cannot make up the money. It is divisive in families and it is divisive in universities. It is unfair and it is something that before very long the Government should do something about.
  Suggestions have been put about that there should be a system of student loans. I will not comment on that except to say that if the total amount taken in parental contribution had been spread among the student population in the last year for which figures were available, which was 1980–81, that would amount to a loan being required for each student—that is, being provided for each student—of £285 a year. So the money could be raised in that way instead, and in that way we could get rid of the parental contribution. It is not just. It is unjust. It is past time that something was done about it.

  819
  My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will say that £165 million is involved. That £165 million breaks down at roughly £690 a student. It is called a contribution, but it is not a contribution: it is a tax.
  My hon. Friend will probably say that we are talking about money which goes into the education pool and that if the parental contribution were done away with £165 million would have to be taken from education expenditure. If it were a contribution, that might be so, but if it is a tax it is part of the total income that the Chancellor has to raise each year to balance his books.
  We read in the press that in the next Budget the Chancellor will be in the happy position of being able, not to give money back, but to allow people to keep more money. That will involve £2,000 million—perhaps £3,000 million. Surely a mere £165 million could be given priority when the Chancellor considers his Budget. I hope that he will consider that carefully.
  11.30 pm
  Mr. Christopher Price: I intervene briefly to try to put straight a statement made by the Under-Secretary in what he will admit to being not one of his best speeches. He was trying to take credit for there being no fall in the age participation rate, in spite of him telling the Select Committee that it would fall.
  The Government's policy is to make it more difficult for young people to go to university, polytechnic or college. Through their bungling incompetence this year they have failed to carry out their policy. Young people's desire to go to college and fill the empty spaces which the Government had not expected to be filled has temporarily and briefly allowed the Under-Secretary to make his statement.
  Mr. Frank Dobson: But they are working on it.
  Mr. Price: As my hon. Friend says, the Government are working on that. All the plans for two-year degrees and cutting expenditure on colleges, polytechnics and teacher training show how the Government will view the fightback by students to keep as decent a chance as they always have had to go to university. When the plans are fully in swing once more, the Government will make it more difficult for young people to go to university.
  For the Under-Secretary to take credit for the fact that the Government's plans have gone wrong because they have not succeeded in cutting the number of students as much as they wished is an extraordinary example of casuistry. I hope that we shall hear no more of it.
  I back what has been said about ordinary residence. One of my constituents has started at a polytechnic. Because the House of Lords has not yet pronounced on the meaning of ordinary residence, my constituent does not yet know whether he will get a grant. He has been in Britain most of his life and he should receive a grant. He does not know whether he will have to pay the whole student fee or the overseas student fee, which is prohibitive and would force him to leave his course in mid-stream.
  The Government's irresponsibility in allowing the ordinary residence problem to continue for two years while waiting for the House of Lords to pronounce on this question has meant that thousands of students do not know their status or whether they can afford to stay at university
  820
  or college. That is scandalous. The word "scandalous" is appropriate. I hope that, as a result of the debate, the Government will think about the matter again and clear it up.
  11.34 pm
  Mr. Michael Shersby: I wish to speak on behalf of the students at Brunel university in my constituency. I listened carefully to the comments of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State about the level of the parental contribution and, while we all understand that students like everyone else, have to make a contribution towards the reduction of public expenditure, I stress that the freeze on the level of the parental contribution has caused hardship, particularly to marginal students.
  It is serious that a number of parents cannot or will not make the full parental contribution. That fact is accepted too easily and has not been investigated carefully enough. I should like my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to tell us what investigations the DES has made in recent months into the reasons why so many parents are unwilling or unable to pay the full contribution.
  What is the Department's policy on the uprating of the parental contribution, and does my hon. Friend see any possibility of restoring the position that existed before the freeze last year? It is a serious problem. At the bottom of the income limit a number of students are finding life difficult and some are dropping out of university. The matter concerns many hon. Members on both sides of the House and the Secretary of State and his colleagues should direct their attention to it and endeavour to put it right.
  I recognise that the parental contribution limit is to increase for the next financial year. I welcome that, but many fair-minded, reasonable students, who are finding life extremely difficult, believe that the increase will not be sufficient. Of course, many groups say "I am not getting enough. The increase in the Government allowance is not enough. I want more and you can put up taxation". We are all familiar with that cry, but I hope that before my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary dismisses the matter as one of only marginal importance he will be able to tell us that the DES is carrying out investigations to learn why so many parents are unable or unwilling to make the full contribution.
  I should be grateful if my hon. Friend would also tell us what steps his Department is taking to make parents more aware of the their obligation to support their student children and to make an investment in the future of our country.
  11.38 pm
  Mr. Waldegrave: By leave of the House, I shall reply to the debate. I have sympathy for a number of points made by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) mentioned the parental contribution, and my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) urged us to abolish it immediately. To the extent that he was bidding for resources from the Treasury for my Department, I pay tribute to him, but if the Treasury were to release £160 million to the education budget, not all of it could go towards abolishing the parental contribution.
  However, we sympathise with parents who are pressed by the thresholds. I pay tribute to the powerful speech made, as usual, my hon. Friend the Member for

  821
  Wokingham (Sir W. van Straubenzee) on that issue. We have increased the parental contribution threshold quite generously—8 per cent. for the next financial year—and I hope that my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge and Northampton, North will recognise that as a useful step.
  The hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) asked me—I failed to respond in my first speech—about our proposals to change the arrangements for travel costs. Those proposals follow a recent Rayner scrutiny of the administration of student awards, which concluded that the arrangements for travel costs were extremely expensive for local authorities in terms of manpower and that the detailed checking of each claim cannot be properly carried out by local authorities. We are considering the matter. We shall discuss it with the National Union of Students and other interest groups to see whether we can find a method of saving manpower costs. We shall also try to ensure that the reality of what is happening is more closely aligned with what is possible for local authorities. However, I cannot outline any new arrangements now.
  The right hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) said, unfairly, that Conservative Members do not understand the seriousness of the matter. That is not so. We have acknowledged openly—I do so again tonight—that we have asked for a contribution from students that is important to the overall savings on public expenditure and to the maintenance of the institutions available to those students. The hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) returned to that point. It may gall him to know that the participation rates have been maintained. We did not believe that it would be possible with the funds available and we pay tribute to the local authority colleges that have maintained the age and qualified participation rates so that they follow the bulge in the age profile. All hon. Members will be grateful for that and will wish to welcome it.
  Mr. Martin J. O'Neill rose—
  Mr. Waldegrave: There is no dispute between us on that—
  Hon. Members: "Give way".
  Mr. O'Neill: The Minister has not yet taken up the point that was hinted at by the right hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) that degree courses in Scotland last for four years, so that the financial hardship is prolonged by 25 per cent. What does he propose to do about that?
  Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman recognises that courses are longer in Scotland, with the result that expenditure by the taxpayer is that much greater—£4,000 or £5,000 of the institutional costs per student. The hon. Gentleman must remember the other side of the equation.
  I know that we are debating primarily the regulations for 1982–83, but I must respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham, who supported our improvements in next year's awards. His comments and warnings about a loans system carry even more weight and we must listen to them carefully. There are no proposals before the House for a loans system, but I urge the House not to be too parochial. Many countries whose political bias is acceptable to the Opposition parties have sensible loan schemes. The hon. Member for Derby, North took a sensible line on the matter in Committee. He said that it
  822
  would be foolish to introduce a foolish loans scheme, but that it was possible to design a sensible loans scheme. That moderate position is entirely characteristic of the hon. Gentleman, and it would be the best view for the House to take.
  We recognise that, in recent years, there has been a fall in the real value of the student award. That is the contribution that we have had to make, in this part of the budget, to the control of inflation. However, I urge hon. Members to remember that the fall is not as catastrophic as people say. I shall remind the House of the figures once again. There has been an increase in the London award index during the past 10 years from 100 to 106. That is not a catastrophic fall. In terms of the index for the ordinary away student, there has been a fall of 4 per cent. in 10 years. At a time of world recession, that is not a very bad deal for students.
  I therefore urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote with the Government and to endorse the deal that we have managed to achieve for students at a time of very great difficulty for the economy in general.
  Question put:—
  The House divided: Ayes 222, Noes 274.

  Division No. 15]

  [11.45 pm

  AYES

  Abse, Leo

  Dewar, Donald

  Adams, Allen

  Dixon, Donald

  Allaun, Frank

  Dobson, Frank

  Alton, David

  Dormand, Jack

  Anderson, Donald

  Dubs, Alfred

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

  Dunnett, Jack

  Ashton, Joe

  Eadie, Alex

  Atkinson, N.(H'gey,)

  Eastham, Ken

  Bagier, Gordon A.T.

  Edwards, R. (W'hampt'n S E)

  Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (H'wd)

  Ellis, R. (NE D'bysh're)

  Beith, A. J.

  Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  English, Michael

  Bennett, Andrew(St'kp't N)

  Ennals, Rt Hon David

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)

  Booth, Rt Hon Albert

  Evans, John (Newton)

  Bradley, Tom

  Ewing, Harry

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Faulds, Andrew

  Brown, Ronald W. (H'ckn'y S)

  Field, Frank

  Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

  Flannery, Martin

  Buchan, Norman

  Ford, Ben

  Callaghan, Rt Hon J.

  Foster, Derek

  Callaghan, Jim (Midd't'n & P)

  Foulkes, George

  Campbell, Ian

  Fraser, J. (Lamb'th, N'w'd)

  Campbell-Savours, Dale

  Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

  Canavan, Dennis

  Freud, Clement

  Cant, R. B.

  Garrett, John (Norwich S)

  Carmichael, Neil

  George, Bruce

  Carter-Jones, Lewis

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Cartwright, John

  Golding, John

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Graham, Ted

  Clarke,Thomas(C'b'dge, A'rie)

  Grant, George (Morpeth)

  Cocks, Rt Hon M. (B'stol S)

  Grant, John (Islington C)

  Cohen, Stanley

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.

  Hamilton, W. W. (C'tral Fife)

  Cook, Robin F.

  Hardy, Peter

  Cowans, Harry

  Harman, Harriet (PecKham)

  Cox, T. (W'dsw'th, Toot'g)

  Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

  Craigen, J. M. (G'gow, M'hill)

  Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith

  Crawshaw, Richard

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Cryer, Bob

  Haynes, Frank

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Cunningham, G. (Islington S)

  Hogg, N. (E Dunb't'nshire)

  Cunningham, Dr J. (W'h'n)

  Holland, S. (L'b'th, Vauxh'll)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Home Robertson, John

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

  Homewood, William

  Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)

  Hooley, Frank

  Davis, Terry (B'ham, Stechf'd)

  Howells, Geraint

  Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)

  Hoyle, Douglas

  823

  Huckfield, Les

  Rees, Rt Hon M (Leeds S)

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Richardson, Jo

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Janner, Hon Greville

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

  Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

  Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)

  Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)

  John, Brynmor

  Robertson, George

  Johnson, James (Hull West)

  Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Rodgers, Rt Hon William

  Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rh'dda)

  Rooker, J. W.

  Jones, Barry (East Flint)

  Roper, John

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)

  Kilroy-Silk, Robert

  Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

  Lambie, David

  Rowlands, Ted

  Lamond, James

  Ryman, John

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Sever, John

  Lestor, Miss Joan

  Sheerman, Barry

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

  Litherland, Robert

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Short, Mrs Renée

  Lyon, Alexander (York)

  Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)

  Lyons, Edward (Bradf'd W)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Mabon, Rt Hon Dr J. Dickson

  Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

  McCartney, Hugh

  Snape, Peter

  McDonald, Dr Oonagh

  Soley, Clive

  McGuire, Michael (Ince)

  spearing, Nigel

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  Spellar, John Francis (B'ham)

  McKelvey, William

  Spriggs, Leslie

  McNamara, Kevin

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  McWilliam, John

  Stoddart, David

  Marks, Kenneth

  Stott, Roger

  Marshall, D(G'gow S'ton)

  Strang, Gavin

  Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

  Straw, Jack

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

  Martin, M(G'gow S'burn)

  Thomas, Dr R.(Carmarthen)

  Mason, Rt Hon Roy

  Thorne, Stan (Preston South)

  Maxton, John

  Tilley, John

  Maynard, Miss Joan

  Tinn, James

  Meacher, Michael

  Torney, Tom

  Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

  Urwin, Rt Hon Tom

  Mitchell, R. C. (Soton Itchen)

  Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Wainwright, E. (Dearne V)

  Morris, Rt Hon C. (O'shaw)

  Walker, Rt Hon H. (D'caster)

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Wardell, Gareth

  Moyle, Rt Hon Roland

  Watkins, David

  Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

  Weetch, Ken

  Newens, Stanley

  Wellbeloved, James

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Welsh, Michael

  Ogden, Eric

  White, Frank R.

  O'Neill, Martin

  White, J. (G'gow Pollok)

  Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

  Whitehead, Phillip

  Palmer, Arthur

  Wigleyt, Dafydd

  Park, George

  Willey, Rt Hon Frederick

  Parker, John

  Williams, Rt Hon A.(S'sea W)

  Parry, Robert

  Wilson, Rt Hon Sir H.(H'ton)

  Pavitt, Laurie

  Winnick, David

  Pendry, Tom

  Woodall, Alec

  Penhaligon, David

  Woolmer, Kenneth

  Pitt, William Henry

  Wrigglesworth, Ian

  Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

  Young, David (Bolton E)

  Prescott, John

  Price, C. (Lewisham W)

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Race, Reg

  Mr. Ron Leighton and

  Radice, Giles

  Mr. George Morton.

  NOES

  Adley, Robert

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Bendall, Vivian

  Alexander, Richard

  Berry, Hon Anthony

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Best, Keith

  Amery, Rt Hon Julian

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Ancram, Michael

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Arnold, Tom

  Biggs-Davision, Sir John

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Blackburn, John

  Atkins, Rt Hon H.(S'thorne)

  Blaker, Peter

  Atkins, Robert(Preston N)

  Body, Richard

  Atkinson, David (B'm'th,E)

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Baker, Kenneth(St.M'bone)

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

  Bottomley, Peter (W'wich W)

  Banks, Robert

  Bowden, Andrew

  824

  Boyson, Dr Rhodes

  Hawkins, Sir Paul

  Braine, Sir Bernard

  Hawksley, Warren

  Bright, Graham

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Brinton, Tim

  Heddle, John

  Brittan, Rt. Hon. Leon

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  Hicks, Robert

  Brotherton, Michael

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Brown, Michael(Brigg & Sc'n)

  Hogg, Hon Dougls (Gr'th'm)

  Browne, John (Winchester)

  Holland, Philip (Carlton)

  Bruce-Gardyne, John

  Hooson, Tom

  Bryan, Sir Paul

  Hordern, peter

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt. Hon. A.

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldf'd)

  Buck, Antony

  Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Budgen, Nick

  Hunt, David (Wirral)

  Bulmer, Esmond

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Burden, Sir Frederick

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Butler, Hon Adam

  Irvine, Rt Hon Bryant Godman

  Carlisle, John (Luton West)

  Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick

  Chalker, Mrs. Lynda

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Chapman, Sydney

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Churchill, W. S.

  Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

  Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th, S'n)

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

  Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Kitson, Sir Timothy

  Clegg, Sir Walter

  Knight, Mrs Jill

  Colvin, Michael

  Knox, David

  Cope, John

  Latham, Michael

  Corrie, John

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Costain, Sir Albert

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Critchley, Julian

  Lee, John

  Crouch, David

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Lester, Jim (Beeston)

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

  Dover, Denshore

  Lloyd, Ian (Havant & W'loo)

  du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Dunn, Robert (Dartford)

  Loveridge, John

  Durant, Tony

  Luce, Richard

  Eden, Rt Hon Sir John

  Lyell, Nicholas

  Eggar, Tim

  McCrindle, Robert

  Eyre, Reginald

  Macfarlane, Neil

  Fairbairn, Nicholas

  MacKay, John (Argyll)

  Fairgrieve, Sir Russell

  Macmillan, Rt Hon M.

  Faith, Mrs Sheila

  McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

  Farr, John

  McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)

  Fell, Sir Anthony

  McQuarrie, Albert

  Fenner, Mrs Peggy

  Madel, David

  Finsberg, Geoffrey

  Major, John

  Fisher, Sir Nigel

  Marlow, Antony

  Fletcher, A. (Ed'nb'gh N)

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Fletcher-Cooke, Sir Charles

  Marten, Rt Hon Neil

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Mates, Michael

  Forman, Nigel

  Mather, Carol

  Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

  Mawby, Ray

  Fox, Marcus

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh

  Mayhew, Patrick

  Fry, Peter

  Mellor, David

  Gardiner, George (Reigate)

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)

  Miller, Hal (B'grove)

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  Mills, Iain (Meriden)

  Goodhew, Sir Victor

  Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Gorst, John

  Moate, Roger

  Gow, Ian

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Grant, Anthony (Harrow C)

  Moore, John

  Gray, Hamish

  Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

  Greenway, Harry

  Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

  Grieve, Percy

  Mudd, David

  Griffiths, E.(B'y St. Edm'ds)

  Murphy, Christopher

  Griffiths, Peter Portsm'th N)

  Myles, David

  Grist, Ian

  Neale, Gerrard

  Grylls, Michael

  Needham, Richard

  Gummer, John Selwyn

  Nelson, Anthony

  Hamilton, Hon A.

  Neubert, Michael

  Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

  Newton, Tony

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Normanton, Tom

  Hannam, John

  Onslow, Cranley

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.

  Hastings, Stephen

  Osborn, John

  Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

  Page, Richard (SW Herts)

  825

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)

  Parris, Matthew

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Patten, Christopher (Bath)

  Sproat, Iain

  Patten, John (Oxford)

  Squire, Robin

  Pattie, Geoffrey

  Stainton, Keith

  Pawsey, James

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Percival, Sir Ian

  Stanley, John

  Peyton, Rt Hon John

  Steen, Anthony

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Stevens, Martin

  Porter, Barry

  Stewart, A. (E Renfrewshire)

  Price, Sir David (Eastleigh)

  Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)

  Proctor, K. Harvey

  Stradling Thomas, J.

  Pym, Rt Hon Francis

  Tapsell, Peter

  Rathbone, Tim

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Renton, Tim

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Thompson, Donald

  Ridley, Hon Nicholas

  Thorne, Neil (Ilford South)

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Rifkind, Malcolm

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

  Townsend, Cyril D, (B'heath)

  Roberts, M. (Cardiff NW)

  Trippier, David

  Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

  van Straubenzee, Sir W.

  Rossi, Hugh

  Vaughan, Dr Gerard

  Rost, Peter

  Viggers, Peter

  Royle, Sir Anthony

  Waddington, David

  Rumbold, Mrs A. C. R

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

  Walker, B. (Perth)

  St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.

  Waller, Gary

  Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

  Walters, Dennis

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Ward, John

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Watson, John

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Wells, Bowen

  Shepherd, Richard

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Shersby, Michael

  Wheeler, John

  Silvester, Fred

  Whitelaw, Rt Hon William

  Sims, Roger

  Whitney, Raymond

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Smith, Dudley

  Wilkinson, John

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Williams, D.(Montgomery)

  Speller, Tony

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Spence, John

  Wolfson, Mark

  826

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones and

  Mr. Ian Lang.

  Question accordingly negatived.

  DIVORCE JURISDICTION, COURT FEES AND LEGAL AID (SCOTLAND) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made—[Mr. Berry]—and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 67 (Public Bills relating exclusively to Scotland),
  That the Bill be committed to a Scottish Standing Committee.
  Question agreed to.

  DIVORCE JURISDICTION, COURT FEES AND LEGAL AID (SCOTLAND) [MONEY]
  Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
  Resolved,
  That it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase in moneys so payable under any other Act which is attributable to any Act of the present Session to extend the jurisdiction of sheriffs in Scotland in relation to actions for divorce, and to make new provision in Scotland as to the fees and outlays of counsel and solicitors in relation both to legal aid and to the giving of legal advice and assistance under the Legal Advice and Assistance Act 1972.—[Mr. Berry.]

  STANDING COMMITTEES ON STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.
  Ordered,
  That during proceedings in the Standing Committee in respect of the Notification of Installations Handling Hazardous Substances Regulations 1982 (S.I., 1982, No. 1357) paragraph (4) of Standing Order No. 73A (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments &c.) shall apply with the substitution in line 41 of 'two and a half hours' for 'one and a half hours'.—[Mr. Berry.]

  Commission for Local Administration (Report)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Berry.]
  11.58 pm
  Mr. John Heddle: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for this opportunity to raise the subject of the annual report of the Commission for Local Administration in England.
  I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for attending at this late hour to listen to my points. I am particularly pleased to have the company of my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Walker). I am also pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman), whose knowledge of these matters is considerable and whose company I very much welcome.
  As the Minister will know, if his doctor makes the wrong diagnosis; if his dentist poisons his gum; or if his surveyor fails to recognise the dry rot in a house that my hon. Friend wishes to buy in the constituency that he nurses so assiduously, he can sue those people for professional negligence. The doctor, the dentist or the surveyor has recourse to his professional negligence policy and can make good the damage that my hon. Friend the Minister may have suffered as a result of that negligence. Such is not the case if a member of the public—Mr. or Mrs. John Citizen—suffers loss through the negligence or maladministration of a local authority.
  I am delighted to have the company of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Colchester (Mr. Buck) who has, through his thriving practice at the Bar, great experience of these matters. I draw the attention of the House to the annual report of the Commissioner for Local Administration in England, who is commonly known as the local government Ombudsman. The Commissioner's terms of reference are similar to those for Scotland and Wales but, as I shall illustrate, are different from those for Northern Ireland.
  The system as it works in Northern Ireland affords greater protection to Mr. and Mrs. John Citizen in two crucial respects. Direct access to the Ombudsman is available to members of the public in Northern Ireland but not to the public in England, Wales and Scotland and redress in cases when the Ombudsman finds in the complainant's favour—the complainant in this case being Mr. and Mrs. John Citizen—and that the local authority has been guilty of maladministration or negligence is different.
  The office of local government Ombudsman, whose official title is commissioner for local administration, was established by the Conservative Government in 1974. People who feel that they have been treated unjustly by their local council and have thereby suffered financial loss or some other damage can obtain the satisfaction of knowing that an independent umpire—I believe that to be the definition of Ombudsman—has examined the matter but cannot necessarily obtain compensation for the damage or loss that they have suffered. They must make their complaint through a councillor.
  I suspect that few of my constituents or the rate-paying public in the West Midlands know of the existence of the office of the local government Ombudsman. Few of them know that he or she resides in Queen Anne's Gate here in
  828
  the City of Westminster and few know who their local councillor is. Therefore, they are debarred from making a complaint through the normal procedures.
  In practice, an increasing number of complaints are sent to the Ombudsman when the general public have taken the trouble to find out what procedures are available to them without going through a councillor. When that happens, a complaint is not accepted, but the complainant is advised by the local government ombudsman of the correct procedure. My hon. Friend will know that in England, 1,953 complaints in 1981–82 as compared with 1,756 complaints in 1980–81 were made direct to the ombudsman.
  The English commissioner says that about 50 per cent. of direct complaints come back, properly referred by the councillor to him. Others are settled locally and others are lost in the mists of apathy. A similar pattern has emerged with the Scottish commissioner who, in his most recent report expressed anxiety at the number of people who, having made a direct complaint, have felt disheartened by the statutory reference requirements and have not proceeded to make their genuine complaints known.
  It is clear that many people are having to ask their councillor to refer their complaint to the Ombudsman. Moreover, local councillors cannot always be counted upon to make that complaint, for reasons that I shall deal with later. It is a cumbersome way of proceeding. For example, what is the position of the local councillor when he disagrees with the complainant's complaint or when he is politically in tune with the local authority? I shall give a specific case in a moment.
  I shall quote from the report of the Scottish commissioner for the current year. He said:
  "Certain councillors definitely consider it to be disloyal to refer to the commissioner a complaint against their council … There are occasions on which particular councillors may be so identified with the policy criticised in the complaint that they may find it difficult if not impossible to agree to refer the complaint to him."
  Baroness Serota has just retired as commissioner for England. In her latest report, she said:
  "Experience over eight years clearly supports the commission's proposal that people should be able to complain either direct to me or through a member",
  meaning through a member of the council.
  "The safeguard for authorities would remain because no complaint could be investigated by a local Ombudsman until the authority concerned has had a reasonable opportunity to consider it."
  That proposal is almost identical to that proposed by the committee of Justice that sat in 1980 and considered the whole terms of reference of the local government Ombudsman. I understand that the National Consumer Council, which has helped by providing me with background information, has been in touch with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Environmental Services. In his reply, my right hon. Friend referred to the necessity for the local government Ombudsman to sift through trivial complaints to prevent his being inundated with trivia. I understand that.
  The Ombudsman already has the work involved in dealing with complaints that he or she receives directly in any event. There is no evidence that they are more or less trivial than the complaints received by the Ombudsman through councillors. Research by the English commission shows that over 90 per cent. of people who complained direct to the local government Ombudsman had already complained to the council, to a councillor or to both.

  829
  There is little sifting left to do. In some cases, the councillor may secure a local settlement to the complaint. In most cases, that possibility has been exhausted. To insist that the direct complaint should go back to a councillor who is busy with other matters imposes an unnecessary burden on the councillor who is, by and large, unpaid for the time that he gives to these services. It undermines public confidence by seeming to create yet another hurdle in the method of pursuing a grievance.
  It would be far better to allow direct access generally and for the Ombudsman to decide in a consistent way which complaints to pursue. As my hon. Friend the Minister will know, this is precisely what happens in Northern Ireland. The local Ombudsman, called I believe, a Commissioner for Complaints, is able to deal with the volume of complaints satisfactorily. My concern is not with the detail but with the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega—the ease with which Mr. and Mrs. John Citizen can apply to the Ombudsman to have his or her case considered. When the Ombudsman determines that negligence or maladministration exists, some method has to be devised whereby the public can obtain redress, damages and satisfaction from the local council, as would be possible where a doctor, dentist or surveyor is involved.
  I wish now to refer to the enforcement of the Ombudsman's recommendations. The Ombudsman in England, in. Wales and in Scotland operates under terms of reference that preclude him from making his findings binding upon the local authority or the defaulting councillors. Even if the Ombudsman concludes that there has been maladministration or negligence, leading to injustice or to a loss, and suggests a remedy, the local authority is free to ignore his findings.
  It is important to keep the problem in perspective. According to the local government Ombudsman for England, 856 out of 918 findings of injustice arising from maladministration between April 1974 and March 1982 were satisfactorily agreed where the final outcome was known. That is 93 per cent. This leaves 7 per cent. unresolved in the eyes of the Ombudsman and possibly more in the eyes of the complainant. Under the cumbersome procedure that operates, there may be a considerable number of complaints that never reach the Ombudsman's desk. That is by no means catastrophic, but it offends the public sense of natural justice to see a finding against a powerful and, for Mr. and Mrs. John Citizen, unaccountable public body being completely disregarded.
  Those instances tend to reinforce the often unfair accusation made by members of the general public that the Ombudsman is a toothless watchdog. The purpose of my seeking the Adjournment debate is to endeavour to give that watchdog more teeth.
  Mr. Bill Walker: My hon. Friend will be aware that the chairman of the Select Committee, on which I sat, on occasions had to call individuals and other people representing groups before the Committee on certain matters, when the Ombudsman was dissatisfied because action had not been taken.
  Mr. Heddle: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution. I value it, knowing that he and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Colchester have great experience of those matters. I know of my hon. and learned Friend's close co-operation with the parliamentary Ombudsman.
  830
  My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will be aware, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman), of the classic case of a Midlands local authority. It dillied and dallied for two years on an application by a council tenant to exercise his right to buy, while the council shuffled the right-to-buy application forms from out tray to in tray, from in tray to tea tray and back again. In the meantime the value of the house that the secure tenant wished to buy increased by £1,400. So frustrated was the tenant by the delaying tactics of the hostile local authority that he reported the matter, through a councillor, to the local government Ombudsman. He called in the papers from both sides and deliberated on the matter. He determined that the council had been negligent in the way in which it had dealt with the application by the tenant to buy his home. In the intervening two-year period, the value of the house had increased by £1,400. The local government Ombudsman suggested that the local authority should reduce the price of that house for the secure tenant by £1,400. What happened? Nothing. The local authority decided to ignore the local government Ombudsman's recommendations.
  The purpose of my raising the matter is to seek to ensure that no other secure tenants exercising their democratic right to buy under the Housing Act 1980—and, I hope, more, when the Housing and Buildng Control Bill, which we discussed today extends the right to buy to more people—will be subjected to municipal gazumping.
  My point is not about the rights and wrongs of council house sales. It is that councils can undermine the intention of legislation. If they are found guilty of maladministration or loss, they can still ignore the findings of the umpire and go scot free. Mr. and Mrs. John Citizen are therefore left to pick up the tab.
  Various solutions to the problem have been canvassed. The most draconian would be to give the Ombudsman or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State the power to direct councils to comply with the Ombudsman's findings. That would necessitate an appeals procedure. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Colchester will agree, that would elevate the matter to a judicial vein. We wish to avoid that.
  The informal co-operation at present between authorities and the Ombudsman could be undermined, which allows a successful conclusion to be reached in most cases. Local government could adopt a policy of voluntary compliance with the Ombudsman's findings. Many local authorities, certainly Lichfield district council and Tamworth borough council, have done that, even when they have disagreed with the Ombudsman, so that they can keep the peace and retain good will between the ratepayers and the town hall.
  I should like to draw the Under-Secretary of State's attention to another solution. In Northern Ireland the operation works differently and apparently more successfully in cases of redress. I quote from the pamphlet of the Northern Ireland Ombudsman which was put out by the Commissioner for Complaints, as he is called there.
  "The Commissioner has no power to compel a settlement, but the complainant has the right to apply to the county court for compensation for a grievance which the Commissioner has upheld but which has not been settled"."
  That policy was endorsed by the committee of Justice in its report in 1980, which I commend to my hon. Friend. It has not led to a long succession of complaints to the courts. On the contrary, according to the information that

  831
  I have received, since 1976 only one case that would have fallen within the local Ombudsman's remit in England, Wales and Scotland, would have gone to court.
  It would appear that the court acts as the long-stop that is there when needed and perhaps, consequently, hardly, if ever, used. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will tell me that the Ombudsman is not a court of law or an arm of Government. I accept that. The service relies on sensible working relationships with local authorities. At the same time, it must retain its credibility with the public. That is most important. The present defects in respect of direct access and redress seem to detract slightly from the latter. They can be rectified without damage to the former, and I commend those suggestions to my hon. Friend.
  12.15 am
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Giles Shaw): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) on being fortunate enough to raise this subject and on the way in which he has argued his case that there should be at least two fairly major changes in the way in which the local government Ombudsman works. My hon. Friend will expect me to comment on those two matters and I shall do so. However, let me set the scene concerning the role of the Ombudsman.
  My hon. Friend referred to the fact that the local government Ombudsman was set up by part III of the Local Government Act 1974. It provides the citizen who feels aggrieved at the way in which his affairs have been handled with the opportunity to place the facts before an independent person. As my hon. Friend conceded, he is not someone with a judicial role, but an independent person. His title is the Commissioner for Local Administration, but the Ombudsman is rightly his popular name. He can look into the matter impartially to see whether there has been maladministration causing injustice, and, if so, what can be done to remedy it.
  I am sure that my hon. Friend would join me in paying tribute to the work of the commission and particularly that of its founder chairman, Baroness Serota, who recently retired, having done much to establish the commission in English public life. My hon. Friend referred to her trenchant foreword to the latest copy of the report for the year ending 31 March 1982. In that report, Lady Serota expresses her appreciation
  "of the way in which most authorities have responded to requests for information, proposals about local settlements and most important of all in readily accepting a Local Ombudsman's judgment that their maladministration has caused injustice to individual complainants and offering satisfactory remedies."
  I do not want anything that I may say tonight to obscure the excellent work done both by the commission and by the bodies investigated in establishing the local Ombudsman system in this country.
  The report shows that 2,706 complaints were referred to the commissioners during the year 1981–82, but, as the report notes, that is a small number compared with the vast amount of administrative action in the course of a year on the part of the authorities within their jurisdiction. Of the 2,500 complaints disposed of during the year, 389 were settled locally, and 279 resulted in the issue of a formal report. Maladministration with injustice was found in 158 cases, but without injustice in 15. The figure for
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  maladministration represents 62 per cent. of the cases in which there was a formal investigation or report, but only 8 per cent. of the total number of complaints considered.
  I trust that my hon. Friend will share my gratification in noting that the number of complaints settled locally is steadily increasing.
  On the question of remedies for injustice, since the system was established the commissioners have found maladministration in 1,054 cases. By 31 March 1982, a conclusion had been reached in 918 of those cases and the commissioners regarded the outcome as unsatisfactory in 62. This latter figure represents between 6 and 7 per cent. of the cases settled, as my hon. Friend said.
  I well understand the feelings of the complainant who takes his case to a commissioner and receives a confirmation that the local authority had mishandled a matter, only to find that the authority is not prepared to put the matter right in the way the commissioner recommends.
  The intention behind the legislation is that the commissioners should achieve results by the force of their arguments, the weight of public opinion and the publicity that attaches thereto. On the whole, the figures demonstrate that this pressure works. Having made that point, however, I recognise that this is scarcely a satisfactory answer to those involved in the comparatively few cases where the authority will not accept the recommendation. However, I think that we have to weigh carefully the suggestions which have been made, and to which my hon. Friend referred, for attempting to deal with this situation by changes in the legislation.
  To give the commissioners power themselves to enforce their recommendations would raise substantial issues of principle. It would give appointed persons the power to direct the actions of elected bodies. Although that is by no means unique, it is an important step. If that step were contemplated, local authorities would inevitably argue for a right of appeal against the decision. As my hon. Friend conceded, that would lead to increased costs and delay. It would also involve a judicial aura descending on proceedings, which inevitably makes them more formal, probably more difficult to operate, and certainly slower. I do not say that the problems are insuperable, but I think that they are formidable, and certainly they alter the characteristics of the present system which to some extent have flourished on informality and ready access to local authorities.
  My hon. Friend's comment that he thought it unlikely that local electors in his constituency would know the councillor with whom they might lodge a complaint is somewhat surprising, because it is surely incumbent on all those who are elected to local authorities to ensure that they are available to constituents who have cause for complaints about the actions of the local authority. I am sure that my hon. Friend carried out that role most assiduously in attending to his constituents' requirements.
  The other suggestion which has been argued is that the successful complainant should be able to apply to the courts for compensation if the body complained against fails to provide a remedy. It is true that Justice recommended that course in a report published in 1980, and it is also advocated by the National Consumer Council. My hon. Friend said that there is provision to that effect in the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints Act 1967.
  I remind my hon. Friend that there are substantial differences in the context in which local government is

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  currently structured and the powers that local government currently possess in Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend may feel that the context in which complaints of the kind which may most readily come to mind in connection with the activities of the local authority are perhaps better dealt with in a slightly more judicial process than those that are available in this country, where happily the context of both local and national government is significantly different. Therefore, I do not believe that too much weight should be placed on the special provisions made under the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints Act 1967. Whatever that may be, it is certainly a case to quote. My hon. Friend has evoked sympathy by the suggestion that such a route be looked at.
  However, we must surely consider carefully what effect such a provision would have on the system as a whole. It would result in much more formality in the investigations. All participants would approach the investigation on the basis that it might lead eventually to proceedings in court. That could lengthen the process and lead to further delay in producing reports and in providing remedies.
  May I stress my conviction that the success that has been achieved by the local government Ombudsman primarily rests upon a quick settlement of the issue? Many matters complained of lend themselves readily to quick informal settlement procedures. In that connection, too, the role of the local authorities is probably important. In most instances they can, quite rightly, be the place of first resort. The Ombudsman is frequently the place of last resort.
  It is significant that, concerned though they are about these cases where local authorities will not carry out their recommendations, the commissioners have not yet argued that they, or anyone else, should have power to enforce their recommendations. I must tell my hon. Friend, as I think he is aware, that we have no plans to amend the Act on that point. However, that does not mean that we are not fully alive to the difficulties that he has posed.
  We have already agreed, when a suitable opportunity occurs, to strengthen the legislation in a minor respect by requiring authorities formally to consider second reports from the local commissioner, just as they have to consider the initial reports. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Environmental Services said in reply to my hon. Friend's written questions on 28 October, the matter is being kept under review.
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  The essential factor will be the attitude of individual local authorities which are asked by the commissioners to take action. I should hope that in future they will feel able to accept the verdicts of the commissioners even though they may not agree with them in every respect. I welcome the view that my hon. Friend has quoted vis-a-vis Lichfield and Tamworth.
  Meanwhile, I am pleased to be able to tell my hon. Friend that the representative body, which is the body set up under the Local Government Act 1974 to represent authorities in these matters, is also worried about the position, and is asking the local authority associations to bring to the attention of local authorities the concern which is felt about those few authorities which fail to comply with the commissioners' recommendations. I hope that the associations will respond to that approach. I am sure that an effective system operating on the present voluntary basis is far preferable to litigation or to some other solution involving compulsion.
  My hon. Friend referred to the commission's proposal that the legislation should be amended to enable people with complaints to submit them either through a member of the authority—as the Act now requires—or direct to the local commissioner. That is one of a series of recommendations which the commission has put to the Department. I know that the commission feels strongly that the present requirement for reference of complaints by councillors is an unnecessary obstacle in the path of the citizen requiring help.
  However, there are arguments on both sides. Local settlement, as I have already said, plays an important part in the procedures. The legislation was designed to enable the local authority member to play a positive part in dealing with grievances. The representative body is concerned that if the commission's proposal were implemented the role of the elected member, and thus of local authorities in general, would to some extent be undermined. If a member fails—
  The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at twenty-eight minutes past Twelve o'clock.

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Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chichester.
The Lord Northbourne—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

The Halfpenny Coin
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will now cease minting the halfpenny coin, since its real value is now about one quarter of that when it was introduced and must add to the cost of keeping our currency in circulation.
The Secretary of State for Trade (Lord Cockfield): No, my Lords. The halfpenny coin continues to meet substantial demand. But we shall keep the question under review.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. May I ask him whether or not he thinks that the halfpenny coin is totally artificial? There is no detriment to the consumer while we have inflation because it is purely a question of the interval before firms put up their prices. If any notice is given it will make no difference at all to the consumer. Finally, may I ask the Minister to give an estimate of the cost of keeping this wretched coin in circulation?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I would regard the halfpenny coin as real rather than artificial. In the first six months of this year, 44.3 million of them were issued by the Royal Mint, which indicates a substantial and sustained level of demand. The coin is used in pricing by a number of organisations, including grocery chains and supermarkets, and as long as the demand for it exists there is a strong case for the Government meeting that demand. So far as the last part of the noble Lord's supplementary is concerned, the coin is still economic to produce.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, would the noble Lord the Minister bear in mind that Scotsmen find this coin very useful when giving tips?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, the noble Lord's interventions are always worth a great deal more than half a penny.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that it would be very expensive to abolish
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this very useful coin, as we would then all have to buy screwdrivers to screw and unscrew the many domestic appliances which this coin seems to fit?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I note the noble Viscount's comment. I appreciate that the coin has a wide number of uses other than as currency.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his Answer will be quite reassuring to millions of people, including old-age pensioners and people on very low incomes, for whom a halfpenny is a matter of some significance? Will he also bear in mind when reviewing the position of the halfpenny that, as and when it should be abolished, there is always a tendency to round upward rather than downward?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I entirely appreciate the point which the noble Lord makes. It is a serious point, because there always is a risk that if this coin disappeared there would be a tendency for people to round up rather than round down. Therefore to that limited extent it does help against inflation.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, may I ask the Government whether or not it would be better if the one penny were to be divided into, as Malta does, 10 mils, thus avoiding increases in prices far greater than are actually necessary?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, the noble Lord is suggesting that we should now have a coin of even smaller denomination.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, I was trying to explain that in Malta they have three coins known as mils, amounting to 10, and that equals one penny. This would avoid price increases of a small nature, because the present halfpenny is worth more than the old penny.
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord, it sounds to me as though he is advocating the introduction of a coin of the value of one-thirtieth of a penny. I thought we had sufficient trouble with coins of a denomination of one half of a penny.
Lord Whaddon: My Lords, is it not a fact that the real reason the Government are keeping these halfpenny coins is because they suspect that they will come in very handy for paying for Britoil shares?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, the noble Lord's wit never deserts him, even in an emergency. But on the present occasion I would suggest that the one-thirtieth of a penny of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, would be nearer the mark.

Royal Marsden Hospital: Early Diagnostic Unit
2.42 p.m.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a statement on the future of the Early Diagnostic Unit at the Royal Marsden Hospital; what is the average cost per patient of screening; and what is the average cost to the National Health Service per patient of mastectomy and hysterectomy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, my honourable friend the Minister for Health is studying a report from the board of governors of the Royal Marsden Hospital on its Early Diagnostic Unit. In the meantime, the service provided at this unit continues. The average cost for each attendance at this unit is £20. There are no reliable up-to-date figures available for the average cost to the National Health Service of mastectomy and hysterectomy.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister stress to his honourable friend the concern of thousands of people in this country, men and women, about the threat to this hospital, particularly when one bears in mind that one in 17 women in this country are likely to have breast cancer in one form or another? Can he tell us whether the Government have any policy about these screening techniques, which are preventative, which can save a lot of money, pain and distress, and which really ought to be a more important part of the National Health Service, as distinct from the sickness service?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am very sorry to say that the screening procedures to which the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, refers are not preventative; they simply determine the existence or otherwise of this unfortunate disease. Furthermore, there is no evidence as yet—although we are conducting a study to look into this matter more carefully—to show that this screening helps the expectation of life of those who are found to suffer from one or other of these diseases.
Lord Byers: My Lords, does it not mean that if this disease is diagnosed early, there is a better chance of its not becoming a terminal one?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am sorry to say—and I was surprised to discover this—that the noble Lord is mistaken and that that is not correct.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister not take further advice on that point? I have many friends who have been to this hospital and who, having been diagnosed as early cases, have had to undergo only a small operation, and not a mastectomy. Their lives have been made bearable and have gone on for a long time.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I must adhere to what I said earlier: that the existence of the screening techniques, welcome though they no doubt are in psychological terms, are not yet proven to have a significant effect on the longevity of the patients.
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Having said that, I may add that there has been very little research into this matter. Surprisingly, no research is being done at the Royal Marsden Hospital, but we are having a study done at some other hospitals. A study was undertaken in New York nearly 20 years ago, but that was inconclusive.
Lord Byers: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister to reconsider one aspect of this subject, which is that if the result of the diagnosis is negative it will ease the anxiety of the woman immediately?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, is correct in that, but I was referring to the longevity or otherwise of patients who are discovered to have the disease.
Lord Wells-Pestell: My Lords, in view of the fact that this matter has received publicity owing to the cost of screening, may I ask whether the noble Lord's figure of £20 per person per screening is accurate? Was a statement not made recently by the authorities at the Royal Marsden Hospital that screening 10,000 patients last year cost £100,000, which amounts to £ 10 per patient?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I did see the figures to which the noble Lord has referred, but unfortunately they were not accurate. The costs of the unit for the year 1982–83 will be around £155,000 and the unit will examine around 7,700 or so patients; that is, 7,700 or so attendances. Therefore the cost is as I have described it to be.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister seriously saying that early screening does not increase the chances of survival and extended life? Is that the advice he has received? Is that not contrary to all the evidence that we have had hitherto?
Lord Trefgarne: I am afraid, my Lords, that those who examine the evidence come to the conclusion which I have conveyed to your Lordships. The fact is that early diagnosis of this unfortunate disease does not necessarily lead to longer expectation of life. As I have said, there is a shortage of concrete evidence on this fact and we are conducting further studies to clarify the position.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, if I may press the noble Lord the Minister on this important matter, will he then recommend to his honourable friend that the closure of this unit be postponed until those studies have been completed?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, my honourable friend will wish to consider all these matters very fully. The studies to which I have referred are not likely to bring concrete conclusions before 1986. In the meantime, some screening procedures at least are available at other places, but that is not to say that my honourable friend has reached a conclusion on this matter.
Baroness Bacon: My Lords, if what the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, says is right—that early diagnosis is really of no use—does it not lead one to the conclusion that it is useless having any operations at all?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we are talking about a particular problem of breast cancer, and the question put to me was whether early diagnosis resulted in a longer or shorter expectation of life; and I had to report to your Lordships the conclusions which we have so far reached on this matter.
Baroness Bacon: My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord the Minister has misunderstood me. What I intended to ask was, does this mean that any breast cancer operation is useless?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the noble Baroness goes too far to reach that conclusion. There are a number of different types of breast cancer and the prognosis for these different types is different in each case. It is important that we get more knowledge on this matter and that is why we are conducting the studies to which I have referred.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister tell the House what he means by "cost"? Does it include a lot of overheads and fixed charges which would fall for recovery elsewhere if they were not recovered from the unit which is to be shut down?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the cost to which I referred is a proportion of the total costs of the Royal Marsden Hospital, calculated in accordance with a proportion of the capital charges and other items which exist.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, would the noble Lord the Minister not agree that there are an enormous number of women who suffer horrible anxiety that they have this dreadful disease, with all its ensuing disfiguring treatment; and would he not further agree that if it were men who were suffering from this very great anxiety, the future of this unit might not be in jeopardy?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I recognise, of course, that this disease, or the prospect of it and anxiety concerning it, is widely felt among women, and I am not surprised. But there is a large number of other ways of determining the existence or otherwise of this disease. For example, there are screening methods other than the particular type which is carried on at this hospital and which are equally widely used.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, may I ask the Minister how many women serve on the board of governors and how many men serve on the board of governors at the Royal Marsden Hospital; and is he aware that the chairman is male and perhaps there is a bias?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if the noble Baroness is suggesting that the board of governors are any less anxious about this matter because they happen to be men rather than women, then she is mistaken.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there is an early diagnostic unit in Guildford and that very authoritative medical opinion in Guildford is convinced that it has the greatest
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possible value? Would the noble Lord ask his experts to look very closely at the reports they are receiving from Guildford.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, Guildford is one of the places at which the study to which I referred is being carried on, and of course the conclusions reached there will be of great value in reaching final conclusions.
Lord Byers: My Lords, in view of what the noble Lord has said, will he check this again, because his statement is going to cause very serious anxiety in many homes throughout the country?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am not sure why it should cause anxiety. There are a large number of different screening methods. One of those type methods is carried on at the Royal Marsden. There are other places where the same methods are carried on, and there are of course a large number of other clinics where less sophisticated methods are employed.
Lord Byers: My Lords, does the noble Lord not realise that what he has done is to cast doubt upon the value of the operation, and this is very worrying for a lot of people?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the noble Lord reached the wrong conclusion, if I may say so, from what I said. What I was doing was casting doubt, if doubt it was, on the screening procedure, not on the operations.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, I apologise for intervening again, but this is so important—
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Young): My Lords, I think we could argue about this for some very considerable time. May I suggest that we have the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, who has been trying to get in for some time, and then I think we should move on. It is open to any noble Lord to put down another Question on this subject for another day.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, surely the Government must be fully aware by now that everything that we call success stories in medical treatment under the National Health Service is falling into jeopardy because of Government cut-backs. The breast screening at Marsden is a follow-up to what is happening at Tadworth; it is a follow-up to what is taking place in Birmingham—the curtailment of kidney treatment services in the Queen Elizabeth. It is the medical success stories that are being so severely cut back. Would the Minister consider not only the Royal Marsden but all these success stories where the medical profession have done so much for the benefit of the National Health Service?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I yield to no one in my admiration for the technical advances which have been achieved within our medical profession in this country. There have of course been no cut-backs; the noble Baroness, if I may say so, is mistaken. The Royal Marsden itself has received a growth in its allocation this year.

NHS: Disputes Procedure
2.54 p.m.
Lord MoIIoy: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider, in conjunction with the National Health Service unions, the creation of a new system of disputes procedure, when the Whitley system cannot arrive at decisions.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we have made it clear that one of the advantages of the two-year settlement that we have proposed—on which the staff groups are now consulting their members—is that it gives time to seek new ways of determining pay and avoiding disputes. In the case of nurses and professions allied to medicine we have proposed the establishment of a review body to advise on pay from 1st April 1984. For other groups of staff we have proposed that discussions about improved long-term pay arrangements start immediately on the conclusion of negotiations in the Whitley Councils on the current pay offers.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for that reply, particularly the last part of it. May I ask him whether he is aware that there is still a great deal of bitterness and rancour felt by tens of thousands of employees of our National Health Service simply because of this issue? Is he aware that in other parts of public industry and private industry there exist national arbitration boards, and that when the Whitley system in these other industries reaches stalemate there is an agreement that such matters should be referred to the national arbitration board by either side, and their decision is binding? Is the noble Lord not aware that if this had been the situation in the National Health Service the bitterness and rancour and all the bad feeling that now exists need not have occurred? Is my proposal, therefore, not at least worthy of consideration?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, no doubt if we had conceded the original unrealistic pay claim a lot of the industrial action would have been avoided. But the Government cannot subcontract their obligation—and it is an obligation—to determine the sum of money available for pay purposes within the health service. That is what we did, and it is for the Whitley Councils to determine the allocation of those funds.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that it had nothing to do with the statement of the Government that they could not accede to the present request of Britain's nurses and ancillary workers? Would the noble Lord not agree that when you have such a situation, then, instead of a massive wedge being driven between one side and the other, there ought to be a system of conciliation, which is traditional within British industry and could well be of great service to the National Health Service in the future?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I do not think it would be of service to the NHS to provide unlimited funds for the purposes the noble Lord describes. It is the Government's duty to decide the total sum of money available for this purpose. We cannot abrogate or subcontract that duty in the way that the noble Lord asks.
Lord Jacques: My Lords, is the Minister aware that every employer could take that view and say, "I am going to decide and nobody else"? That is what it amounts to. Is he further aware that the Government as the ultimate employer have a responsibility for the industrial relations in those departments and activities which they control? Is he further aware that one of the best things you can do to prevent unrest is to have proper systems of conciliation and arbitration?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the conduct of industrial relations in the health service is not in the first instance a matter for the Government; it is a matter for the regional and district health authorities. But I cannot get away from what I have been saying to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. The Government really do have a responsibility for determining the total sum of money available for these purposes, as indeed does any responsible employer.
Lord Blyton: My Lords, as the noble Lord has stated that the health workers' claim was unrealistic, can he say whether the 15 per cent. increase given to chairmen in the nationalised industries was realistic?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I have explained in the past the distinction between the health service workers and some of the other groups of workers to which the noble Lord draws my attention. Of course, the 12 per cent. claim of the National Health Service workers was not actually 12 per cent. because they were asking for increased holidays and reduced working hours at the same time. Their real claim was around 20 per cent.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, would the Government still feel the same about the findings of an arbitration body if it were possible for the Government in the last resort, with the consent of both Houses of Parliament, to overturn the findings of any arbitration body?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as I say, it is for the Government to determine these matters—the total sums of money available; we have, as the noble Lord knows, proposed a review body for the nurses and for the professions allied to medicine, where a procedure not too far removed from what the noble Lord proposes would doubtless take effect.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that when matters have been referred to existing national arbitration boards they have taken full cognisance of the views of both sides? I do not know when there has been a single instance in which the national arbitration boards for various industries—for example, the railway industry—have conceded the whole point of the employers or the whole point of the employees. Is the noble Lord not aware that people who comprise these national arbitration boards in our country today are not abysmally stupid people—they

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recognise the facts? They have made a great contribution to easing difficult situations. Would the noble Lord not agree that this might help when we establish a new system for our National Health Service?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as I understand it, the railway tribunal's findings are not binding on the railways board. In any event, the railways board, and, say, the National Coal Board are different altogether in kind from the National Health Service because they are trading enterprises.

Rudolf Hess
2.59 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper:
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the up-to-date medical condition of Rudolf Hess following his recent spell in the British Military Hospital in Berlin; and when they last made representations to the Russians about his continued imprisonment.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Belstead): My Lords, Rudolph Hess had mild pleurisy in September but after responding to treatment in the British Military Hospital returned to Spandau on the 20th September. He is in reasonable health for a man of his age. My right honourable friend the Minister of State made representations to the Soviet Ambassador in favour of Hess's release as recently as 23rd June this year.
The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells: My Lords, in thanking the Minister for that Answer, may I ask whether he considers that Mr. Andropov's arrival on the scene is perhaps a good moment to test the Soviet mind further in the hope of a definite move towards ending this despicable business of keeping a sick old man in prison?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, we should think about the point put by the right reverend Prelate. Of course, it was only in June, as I said in my main Answer, that my right honourable friend Mr. Douglas Hurd made representations to the Soviet Ambassador, and that was fairly recent. However, I should like to draw my right honourable friend's attention to what the right reverend Prelate said.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister not agree that if the request made to the new President of the Soviet Union, whenever that may be, is refused, it would be possible when it is our turn for garrison duty at Spandau merely to release Rudolf Hess? It is not going to cause an atomic war. Does not my noble friend agree that it is inhuman and completely without compassion that this old, old man should be detained? He should be freed to end his last days among his family. It is monstrous that he has not been released.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the difficulty with what my noble friend suggests is that all matters relating to the imprisonment of Hess are subject to agreement by the four powers. The unilateral action suggested by my noble friend to be taken by the British Government, or by the three Western powers acting together, would constitute a violation of a binding international agreement and could put in jeopardy the whole complex of four-power agreements on which the security of West Berlin is based.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, would it not be possible for the poor chap to escape?
Lord Belstead: No, my Lords.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, can my noble friend say what reason was given by the Russian Government, when the matter was raised in June, for their insistence on keeping this very old and sick man in prison? Were they frightened of him?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, we have had no formal response to my right honourable friend's approach.

Business of the House
Baroness Young Baroness Young rose to move, That the order of Thursday last relating to the Motions in the names of the Lord Orr-Ewing and the Viscount Rochdale be discharged.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, although my noble friend the Chief Whip made a business statement at the earliest opportunity last night, it is only right that I should give the House a further explanation today. My Motion today arises from an exchange with the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, during consideration of my Motion last Thursday which applied the short debate rules to today's debates in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, and the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, expressed concern that it would be difficult to contain the important debate today on cable television to two and a half hours. I undertook to consider the matter carefully, through the usual channels, and agreement was reached yesterday on how best to proceed. This agreement has led to my Motion today.
Its effect is to discharge last Thursday's Motion, to enable the debate on cable to take place without any time limit. In turn, my noble friend Lord Rochdale has agreed that his debate should take place on an Unstarred Question and not on a Motion. I should like to say how grateful we are to him for his agreement to proceed in this way. I am sure that the agreement reached will be in the general interest of the House and I know that the cable debate will be an important and interesting one. I am sure that the noble Lords who are down to speak will endeavour to do so at not too great a length so that my noble friend's Unstarred Question can begin at not too unreasonable an hour.
Moved, That the order of Thursday last relating to the Motions in the names of the Lord Orr-Ewing and the Viscount Rochdale be discharged—(Baroness Young.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Personal Bills: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee on Personal Bills be appointed, to which all Petitions for Personal Bills shall stand referred; and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the Lords following, with the Chairman of Committees, be named of the Committee:—

Banks, L.

Cross of Chelsea, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Teviot, L.

Wilberforce, L.

Willis, L.

—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Sound Broadcasting: Select Committee
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the Lords following, with the Chairman of Committees, be named of the Select Committee on Sound Broadcasting:—

Ardwick, L.

Cathcart, E.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Phillips, B.

Winstanley, L.

That the Committee have power to adjourn from place to place and to report from time to time;
That two be the quorum of the Committee;
That the Committee have power to appoint Specialist Advisers;
That the Committee have power to join with any Select Committee on Sound Broadcasting that may be appointed by the Commons;
That the Committee have power to agree with the Commons in the appointment of a chairman for any joint meeting.—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Motion agreed to; and ordered that a Message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

Cable Expansion and Broadcasting Policy
3.5 p.m.
Lord Orr-Ewing Lord Orr-Ewing rose to call attention to the Report of the Inquiry into Cable Expansion and Broadcasting Policy (Cmnd. 8679); and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am very glad indeed to have the opportunity of starting this debate. Your Lordships' House is at its best on a subject of this calibre when it tries to see forward and uses the expertise on all Benches in all parts of the House to consider what we should do about a new development such as cable television. I think it is perhaps right at this juncture to say that although I am interested in all
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technical subjects and interested in any new technology which will create jobs, as everyone who serves in this House must be, I have no financial interest in any cable company, existing or embryo, nor hold any shares, so far as I know, in any such organisation. I am grateful that as many as 18 Peers, many with great experience, are taking part in this debate. We perhaps owe an apology to the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, in asking him to bide his time for so long, and also to those who are speaking in the second debate. I shall try to be relatively brief.
It will be everyone's wish that I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Most of us have read hundreds of reports in our day. I do not think I have read a better one. It has the great advantage of being short, lucid and highly realistic and that is a good recipe for a successful report. I am sorry in a way that his terms of reference did not take in the two-way services like electronic mail and other developments which cable makes possible. We may have to await Dr. Eden's Report for that.
Since the debate was announced Peers will probably have received a deluge of views and mail, as I have. I have brought about one-tenth into the Chamber. It would have been 10 centimetres thick if I had brought it all. Broadly, the broadcasting organisations tend to try to stay neutral and then point out every conceivable disadvantage which extra competition from cable might create to their present lives. That is natural. Anyone who has enjoyed a monopoly or duopoly for some years does not like to see further competition likely to be introduced. On the other hand, the CBI, the National Consumer Council and the Consumers Association have all come down very strongly in support of the Hunt recommendations. The broadcasting organisations in their criticism tend to ask for tighter control and for more regulation and also for delay. The Consumers Association put it very well. It said:
"The task is to increase consumer choice in the provision of TV services whilst protecting what is usually described as public service brodcasting".
With over 20 or more programme choices available, one can cater for minorities and, above all, develop a local organisation and local communities and allow them to broadcast, appear on television, and create television programmes. This is not possible through the normal broadcasting channels.
Unfortunately, the quality of the programmes and the degree of choice must depend upon the financial success of the companies organising them. I think all are agreed that money cannot come either from the taxpayers or from the present radio and television licences. Therefore, it must come from advertising, from sponsors or—and I hope later, but not too much later—from "pay per view". People will pay—it is amazing to me, but even our children will do so—for video machines. They are not cheap either to buy or to hire. Indeed, the video tapes are not cheap. But the growth ofthat industry shows that there are very large numbers in our population who want and who are prepared to buy and to pay for more choice or different programmes which they wish to select. I believe that we must allow the cable operators the maximum freedom to attract advertisers and subscribers. I am not sure that the cable companies should always have, forever and aye, the liability that they "must carry" all

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the four existing channels. It surely must be possible to allow a TV set to take those over the air and use other channels on the television set for the extra choices coming from cable.
Many critics say—and the noble Lord, Lord Annan, said so in his article in the Listener which is published by the BBC—that competition will lower standards. Some people say that competition will provide soft porn. I must say that one is bound to notice that there is a good deal of soft porn on our existing channels. I always feel that but for Mrs. Whitehouse and her gallant association, there might be even more. However, it is alleged that all programmes will probably have excesses imported along USA lines. Every one of those bogies was raised in the early 1950s. The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, and I faced each other across another place in those days, and we can remember vividly how Mr. Churchill's Government sought to break the then existing BBC monopoly. I was a very junior member of the team led by Lord Clitheroe, and later by Lord De La Warr, in which Sir David Gammans and others were leading figures. I was proud to be a member of that team. That is another reason why I declare an interest. I still have an interest in broadcasting, and particularly the technical development of it.
What has happened in the 30 years since then is that, despite all those fears and anxieties—and they were genuine anxieties that we were going to imitate America—we have found ways, and I suggest typically British ways, of organising our broadcasting. I believe that we can do the same now that cable offers greater freedom, more choice and can cater for minority views and, above all, for local views as well.
I take the view that now that the technical problems have been overcome there is no reason why any Government of this country, especially this Government, should deny people the right of risking their own money, their own experience and their own jobs in providing extra programmes to peoples' homes. I take this libertarian view especially at this time because the opportunity exists for creating new jobs for young technicians, for young programme creators and for the creative minds of young people. I believe that these jobs are urgently needed when so many of our youngsters are leaving school and are not able to find a worthwhile occupation.
Rediffusion, one of the oldest established cable companies predicts that an extra 20,000 jobs will be created in the next few years if we go ahead with cable television. In allowing cable to expand we should also be helping to create some of the business and commercial infrastructure of our country for the 1990s.
It is true to say that cable may be launched on the back of entertainment and education, but a modern fibre optic cable, with its interactive capability—which means that signals can go and return and that one can have question and answer along it—has great potential in the 1990s in business, in industry, in electronic mail and in a host of other applications.
Of course there must be some body, which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, describes, to exercise oversight. He makes that point very firmly. He does not call it "control"; he calls it "oversight". I endorse Lord Hunt's view that we should have a cable authority. I think that many people in the House must praise the
800
work that is done by the IBA. and it has been suggested that they are the right people to do it. Despite the excellence of their performance and the way in which they have evolved in order to meet the challenges, I do not believe that it is right for an old-established authority to deal with a new and competitive system. Therefore, I think that it would be wiser to set up a cable authority as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggests.
People then question whether it will have any teeth in its oversight. Of course the ultimate bite is the deprivation of the franchise to the cable company, but that is a very severe action, not only for the company itself but on the homesteads which have bought the facilities. Generally I think that it is too extreme. I like the idea that if an operator continues to transgress the codes of conduct which have evolved, then the programme schedules and other matters should come under closer supervision by the cable authority. The IBA have done that admirably. I believe that the cable authority could do the same. Nor would I rule out—some people have in the criticisms that I have read—the question of fines coming from the profits of those companies if they transgress in minor ways, before one has to take the extreme action. So I recommend that it does have some teeth, but that we provide it with teeth which will not normally destroy the organisation which has transgressed.
I believe also that there should be some regulation concerning the amount of overseas programmes. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, looked at this point with his committee—I am sure he did so—because there is much demand that we should not provide the overspill for many American or Canadian programmes by our cable companies. But it is not nearly as easy as it seems at first sight, because if we had one cable doing only sport, then it would not be difficult for that cable to provide 100 per cent. British sport. If we had one cable doing only local affairs, it would not be difficult for it to do 100 per cent. local affairs. If we had another one doing only films, how could it possibly get even the majority of its films from British sources? Regrettably, our film industry is in such a powerless condition that there would not be enough films. So the general average rule—and the existing rule for the BBC and the IBA is that 14 per cent. of the programmes can come from overseas and 86 per cent. from home—could not apply in the case of cable. Because it is difficult to work out a formula, I am sure that it does not mean that it is impossible, and I think that we should leave it to the cable authority to do just that.
Other people are worried about advertising. I see no problem in setting up a code of advertising. It has been done already by the IBA. The Advertising Standards Association, which has done such an admirable job, believe that that is perfectly easy and that they could do it themselves without a special body to undertake it. There are other anxieties about obscenity and decency. In this connection I thought that the Consumer Association report did well. They said:
"We feel that regulation on anything like the scale currently applied to off-air services would be inappropriate. A code with statutory backing, plus the laws of obscenity, defamation et cetera, would probably be adequate".
All I am saying is that we probably cannot, in a general debate of this sort, draw up a detailed code. But I

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believe that it is possible to do so and I think that it should be done.
I earnestly hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Elton, comes to wind up we shall not be told that there are good reasons for delay, to put everything back, to reconsider it, to set up new committees which will sit for hours and produce minutes. I would not advocate delay and I hope that not too many of your Lordships will support delay. We have an opportunity which we should grab. There are 20,000 job opportunities waiting to be created. Moreover, I wish to draw attention to the progress made overseas. Sometimes, despite the comparative ease of air travel, I think that, sitting on this island, we are a little complacent in somehow not knowing just what is going on as regards developments overseas. In Canada, 60 per cent. of the homes are now wired for cable. Cable is widely distributed in Belgium and Holland. In Belgium you can choose from two alternative French programmes, two German programmes, two Belgian programmes and several other alternatives. That is today—and we have not started.
A few days after the report of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was published, West Germany and France published their reports, but in this instance France in particular said what it was planned to do to bring cable television into effect. Earlier this morning I telephoned the French Embassy to get the latest position and I was told that experimental cable television systems are now operating in Biarritz, Lyon, Grenoble and Metz; that the number of houses with cable TV by 1983 will be 100,000; that there will be another 100,000 by 1984; that 1·5 million houses will have it by 1986; and that 50 per cent. of France will be wired for television cable by 1990. The French Government are acquiring the cables and are undertaking the laying of those cables which, of course, initially may be of the coaxial type but later will be in optical fibres.
If the French Government are doing this, if the Canadian Government and the American Government have permitted this to be done, why must we continue to dally while the world walks past us? I would urge the Government to do some of these things now in Information Technology Year. First, I would urge them to set up a cable authority. If it cannot be statutory, then let it be advisory, and advisory to the Secretary of State at the Home Office. Secondly, I urge them to allow some of the established cable companies—like Rediffusion, Visionhire, Philips' and others—to relax the rule temporarily about "must carry" and to use those channels for the provision of experimental cable programmes. In short, to summarise, let us now start creating the facilities and let us now start creating the 20,000 extra jobs which will go with those facilities. I earnestly hope that that will be a view that will go out from this Chamber. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.23 p.m.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, first, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, for putting down this Motion today, which has enabled your Lordships to have an early opportunity to discuss this important report and for the debate to take place today on a Motion without the time
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restriction originally envisaged on the Order Paper. Let me say at the outset that we see cable television as a technological innovation which, if properly used, can be greatly to the benefit of the whole community. It could provide viewers with a greater variety of worthwhile programmes. It could make a major contribution to increased employment prospects in a wide variety of technologically-based industries.
But there must be debate and discussion on the machinery proposed in the Hunt Report. If we get the answers right, not only will viewers be able to live a more enriched life, but the dole queues will diminish. But if we get them wrong, the only people who are likely to benefit are the cable operators themselves.
I intend to cover much of the ground in my opening remarks, but I hope that my noble friends will fill in a number of the aspects which inevitably I shall have to skate over in my remarks in my endeavour to be short. At this point, I should like to pay tribute to the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, who has very generously agreed to make his Motion an Unstarred Question so that it will, in fact, come on later than he originally expected. For this reason I shall try to curtail my own remarks. I also note with interest that this particular debate has attracted three maiden speakers, and I shall look forward to hearing each of their speeches.
The report distinguishes four separate functions in the proposed cable industry: the cable provider, the cable operator, the programme provider and the programme maker. The conclusion of the Hunt Report is that the most important figure of these four will be the cable operator. The authors of the report do not see any reason why the cable provider and the cable operator should not be one and the same body. But I think it is clear that if they are one and the same body, the difficulty of dislodging a particular operator who does not meet the standard set down will be very much more difficult.
Although the report suggests that an operator should be compelled to sell at a predetermined figure his installed cable to a new operator, he will undoubtedly claim that he took the risk in the first place of laying the cable and, therefore, should be allowed sufficient time to recoup his investment. It has been suggested in certain quarters that it could take up to 25 years for this investment to be recouped. Therefore, I think that there would be much to be said for there being a national common carrier.
The Hunt Report saw this as inconsistent with Government policy. In his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, told your Lordships that in France the Government themselves were laying the cable. I shall invite your Lordships to consider the advantages of a national carrier. It would enable the cable operators' constituencies to be adjusted from time to time as circumstances demand; it would facilitate a uniform national cable system; and it would enable the regulatory body to change operators more easily.
Another major question to which Parliament will have to address itself is whether it should prescribe the form of cable to be used. If there is no prescription as to the sort of cable, the inevitable outcome of this will be that the system will develop in the same sort of haphazard way as the railways developed in our country many years ago, with the possible necessity at

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a later date for redundant cable to be uprooted and to be replaced by a more modern form of cable.
It is undoubtedly clear that a system based on the well-established medium of copper cable could be introduced more quickly. Copper cable has been around for years and is still significantly cheaper than fibre optic cable. But, if there was to be a decision to prescribe fibre optic cable, it is clear that, because of that decision, the cost of fibre optic cable would drop dramatically. Fibre optic cable is still an infant technology, but it offers far more development potential than a copper-based system and, as I have said, should be cheaper within a relatively short period of time.
What I think is important—indeed, it is of paramount importance—is that United Kingdom industry should have the chance of succeeding in this field in the international market place. Once large economies of scale have become possible for British companies, their cost effectiveness can be maximised and Britain will be able to compete effectively overseas. Indeed, following on what the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, said about France, I understand that the French have already agreed to link 1·4 million homes to a fibre optic system. This will be the sort of opposition which will be encountered. If we have a multiplicity of cable systems our chances of success in this particular international market will be considerably reduced.
I turn now to the question of the cable operator. The Hunt Report envisages a new cable authority responsible for awarding franchises and for monitoring performance. It would have very few powers, although the Hunt Report suggests that it would have a closer supervisory role if the authority became aware of consistent complaints about a particular operator. The authority would not set standards. It would just keep in touch and monitor what is going on rather than encourage the maintenance of standards.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, that we need a separate cable authority, but I see that authority having substantially the same sort of licensing powers as the IBA has today. The report suggests a licensing system for cable operators with the licence coming up for renewal every eight years, with an initial period of 10 years. This would seem to be about right, and follows the pattern of licensing for television and broadcasting operators.
The report sees each operator serving an area of about half a million homes. This may, or may not, be the right sort of area of operations for an operator. By choosing such a relatively small area the operation of the system will be local; on the other hand, the report does not make any stipulation about local ownership. I understand that this could be deliberate in that it would enable the licensing authority to give operators potentially profitable franchises and lump them together with potentially unprofitable ones. But I think that the question of whether there should be some form of local ownership ought to be looked at. Should it be stipulated that all operators should originate from the area in which they are based?
With regard to the question of the provision of programmes, the report envisages a free-for-all
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through the cable itself with the single stipulation that the public service television channels should be carried. That is a wise stipulation, although I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, in his introductory remarks, queried whether there should always be that stipulation. I would have thought that this was a stipulation which should remain. There are no stipulations concerning the need for operators to cater for local needs, to cater for ethnic minorities, to cater for news programmes, or to put on artistically creative programmes. The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, was worried about the number of foreign programmes to be used. I think that the way to tackle this question may be to stipulate minimum programme standards carried through any particular cable network, and that on top of that additional foreign programmes could be carried.
If cable is introduced on the lines of the Hunt Report, the likely effect will be to increase the number of viewing options for individual householders, but not the range of their viewing options. Without control the most profitable areas for cable will undoubtedly be the re-showing of popular films, and, as as been said, showing pornographic films of one sort and another could also prove popular.
It is also clear that to produce creative programmes will be costly. The experience of America suggests that without some form of regulation creative programmes and news programmes are likely to go to the wall. Yet it must be said at the same time that for many forms of programme cable is an ideal medium. An ideal medium, for example, to cater for ethnic minorities in particular cities in Britain. But again we are up against a particular problem. The London Business School survey, I understand, shows that if cable is to be financially successful it will have to operate as a home box office until the end of the century.
Then we must consider the effect that cable will have on public service broadcasting. Will it drain away the skills and advertising money from that area or not? The report claims that cable will supplement, and not rival, existing services. But the lack of adequate oversight will inevitably mean that rivalry will be there. One wonders whether it will drain the public service broadcasting of public events. One can imagine a situation in which cable operators will be able to muscle in on particular events. The report stipulates that certain traditional national events should not be available to the cable operators; but one can envisage that there will be many events that people generally would want to see but, because they do not have access, will be deprived from doing so. We must remember that in the foreseeable future it is likely that only 50 to 60 per cent. of the country will be able to be wired for cable, with the other 40 to 50 per cent. not being able to be wired because of the location of particular homes. We must ensure that those 40 to 50 per cent. are not to be deprived.
The other area on which I have not touched is the whole communications problem; the multiplicity of communications systems: how in fact cable will provide for interactive activities, such as shopping, banking, and so on. This is another wide-ranging possibility which must be looked at, and which, if we proceed without due thought, may not in fact take the

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form we would hope. The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, in his final remarks hoped that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in his reply would not put forward various reasons for not proceeding. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, this is an important issue which we must get right. To proceed with all speed and to get it wrong would not be to the advantage of the country as a whole. I think it important that we make certain that we have the safeguards right, and that we have the whole method of operation right before this system goes ahead.
3.40 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I must begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, for giving the House an opportunity to discuss a matter of great importance. I must also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, for his courtesy and kindness in giving us adequate time to do justice to a subject of great complexity and importance. Not that there has not been enough discussion already. It seems that for many months past some people have been discussing nothing but cable. Unfortunately, it seems that most of that discussion has been focused on the wrong areas—on technical questions regarding coaxial copper, fibre optics, tree and branch systems and the like—whereas what really matters are the actual television programmes transmitted via cable (who is to make them, where are they to be made and what standard are they to be?) and that has been largely overlooked in the earlier discussions.
The Government's decision to go ahead with cable—and it seems clear that they have decided to go ahead; indeed, the terms of reference of the Hunt Committee show that that decision has been taken in principle—seems to have been based on the economic and job-creating opportunities which, it is hoped, will be generated by the interactive services, which will become a real opportunity only when we have a comprehensive fibre optic cable network in Britain. In the meantime, early progress towards a communications cable network will have to be carried on the back of entertainment, of television programmes.
Some jobs have already been created. Indeed, it seems that a new profession has arisen, that of people who seem to earn their living by going round the country presenting papers on cable to symposia and study groups. But it is always the same people. The same people attend those symposia—many noble Lords have attended several of them—often at great expense, going on behalf of their companies, with the same people presenting the papers. You can perm any 10 from 100 and all the papers have been churned out already. The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, said he had them all. So have I. They make a pile feet high. But they are all on technical matters and are not on the matters which I believe are fundamentally important; we should be talking about programmes, and it is that about which I shall talk in the main.
First, however, a brief comment about the Government's apparent assumptions about the benefits of a fibre optic cable communications network. If we are to believe what we are told-—I believe some of it—then, as we shall at some stage in the future be able to shop by cable, go to the bank by cable, place our bets by
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cable and even attend meetings by cable, it seems that we shall have arrived at a time when nobody will have to meet anybody. There may be noble Lords who are delighted at that prospect. There are occasions when I feel a little like that myself. But we may some day come to realise that human contact has been socially vital. I do not think people all go to the launderette because they have a lot of washing; they go to talk and meet people. We may find that many people still want to go to the shops and banks, so let us be wary and proceed stage by stage and watch the developments carefully.
I come to the argument about creating two Britains, a part of Britain which will have a communications cable network and another part which will not. I suggest that we must get away from the notion that rural areas must somehow be made identical to urban areas. They are not identical and I hope nobody seeks to make the North Yorkshire Moors exactly the same as the Newcastle suburbs. They are different; they are often deprived of services and sometimes the people there welcome that. Many of those who are fortunate enough to live in a rural area—I now live mostly in Cumbria, where there are no services; no water, no refuse disposal, and I hope shortly to be able to arrange to have no telephone—welcome this apparent deprivation. So let us not be too put off by the fact that we cannot necessarily establish a cable communications network which can spread throughout the whole of Britain.
What matters, however, is if the development of that network in some way damages or deprives people in rural areas of something which they now have and value. That is something that we must watch very carefully. In other words, we must see to it that the development of television and entertainment by cable does not in any way deprive people who do not have cable of the high standard of service they now receive from BBC 1 and 2, ITV and perhaps Channel 4.
I leave those matters, which I do not really understand—those concerning coaxial copper, fibre optics and so on—and turn purely to broadcasting matters, and in that connection I ask noble Lords who are worrying about the issue—and I know that many of my noble friends are worried about it—to forget for a moment about America and to get away from the idea that what has developed in the United States must inevitably happen here. I do not think that is true. We should have some confidence in our own ability to do things better. I appreciate that there have been some awful things in the United States. For example, a programme called "Ugly George"—it was really horrible—went bankrupt in about seven months. So did a Parkinson-type discussion programme in which the various participants appeared nude. That lasted about five weeks. In the end, things right themselves, so let us have confidence in what we can do.
In that connection, I have been looking back at the debate in your Lordships' House in, 1954 on the Television Act, which brought in commercial and independent television. The most horrifying forecasts were made by noble Lords of the dire consequences of what we were doing. One noble Lord, whose son now sits on the Opposition Front Bench, said:
"If this Bill becomes law, future historians will deem it to be one of the most irresponsible measures of modern times".

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Some of those future historians are in your Lordships' House today. They deem it nothing of the kind. They think that the development, on the whole, has been socially advantageous.
Another noble Lord—I do not want to go through all the pages of the volume to find his words—said that, in introducing not independent television but commercial television—anything commercial was somehow deemed to be fatally improper—we were dropping a maggot in the British broadcasting apple. Where is the putrefaction? The apple is far from rotten; it is healthy and appetising. The forecasts which were made at that time have not been fulfilled. Indeed, we have shown that we are capable of doing things very much better than the Americans.
That does not mean that we can safely leave everything to develop on its own; and here I must comment on ways in which we can try to ensure that enough of the programmes which will ultimately appear via cable will have originated in the United Kingdom and been created by people in Britain. I shall then turn briefly to the present rules operated by the Independent Broadcasting Authority in relation to commercial television. There is, I understand—there are noble Lords present who are very clear on the subject and are concerned about it—a requirement that 86 per cent. of the programmes on commercial television must be self-made in the United Kingdom; that 14 per cent. of the programmes can be imported material; and that there is a two-hour separation between imported items.
Let us consider for a moment the economics of the matter and look first at the 14 per cent. That represents programmes such as "Kojak", "Starsky and Hutch" and the like—some of them very good, some of them rotten—and the cost to the network of broadcasting material of that kind, imported from the United States, is about £17,000 per hour of transmission. If we turn to home-made programmes like "Brideshead Revisited" or "Smiley's People" (little matter that it is BBC because the costings are the same), my information is that those at present cost about £250,000 per hour.
At those figures, do noble Lords really think that uncontrolled cable operators, without quotas of any kind or any sort of enforcement, will inevitably buy British? If it is not too unparliamentary to quote George Bernard Shaw, I have to say, "Not bloody likely!" We really must take steps to see that much of the material which is transmitted via cable is made and created in Britain, and I think that we can do it.
It is interesting to note that perhaps the best of the cable television in the United States is what is known as PBS—the public broadcasting service, or public service broadcasting, always abbreviated to PBS. But in the profession, among broadcasters in the United States, PBS is known as purely British service. Why?—because our services are better, and because the public service broadcasting service consists mainly of British items. We must see to it that we get that British service on cable, and that we do not merely get cheaper stuff from abroad.
Indeed the Government have been right to lay on the fourth channel a burden and guidelines under which the channel is operated, to ensure that it
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stimulates the growth of private production companies up and down the country, and preferably out of London. That seems to me to be absolutely admirable. But if we allow the fourth channel to do that for perhaps a year or two years, and then kill that off by permitting some other body wholly to import programmes, we should make a great mistake.
Here I must turn very briefly to the question: who is to be the controlling authority? I think—and I agree with others who have said it—that the IBA has a unique record. I honestly believe that in the material that it has sent to noble Lords—and we all have it—the IBA has sometimes, and in some ways, rather undersold itself. I think that the IBA has actually done more than it admits to doing. In its most recent papers it tends to concentrate in a rather negative kind of way on what it has been able to do to control programmes.
My experience of the matter, which is fairly considerable in a personal respect, is that the IBA has achieved very much more in a positive sense. On the negative side, I remember the very early days when there was a requirement that the content had to be balanced within the same programme. Back in 1957 and 1958, when I was presenting programmes on social questions and medical matters for Granada, I was prevented from doing a programme about the desirability, on grounds of public health benefits, of applying smokeless zones in certain areas which did not have such zones. I could not do the programme unless I could drag along a reluctant representative of a backward local authority who did not agree with smokeless zones. That was because there was a requirement to balance the content within an individual programme. The noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, changed all that, with a requirement that the balance should be overall in the programme output in general.
In my view the real achievements of the Independent Broadcasting Authority have been on the positive side. Because of its ability to withhold a franchise or withdraw it, it has been in a position of immense influence with the companies. I could reel out a long list of socially desirable, beneficial, cultured, and other programmes of that kind—a very long list—which in my honest view have been transmitted only because of the influence of the authority, exerted in a positive sense. The authority has let it be known that it will look favourably on programme companies that do work of this kind, that kind, or the other kind, and so the companies have then gone ahead and done programmes which I am sure they would not have done had it not been for the positive influence of the authority.
Therefore I say that, whatever authority we have—and we must have some authority in control of cable television—I hope that it will tend to act in a positive sense by stimulating good programmes in the kind of way that I have mentioned, rather than by purely thinking that it controls the programmes negatively by looking at everything and saying, "No, we don't like that, and we would like this to be a little different; and cut out that bit of that one", and so on. So in that sense perhaps the Government have got it about right in saying that we shall have a new cable authority, but I hope that when they do have a new cable authority it will act that way.

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Perhaps it might have been better to leave control to the IBA. At one stage there was a suggestion that there could be a consortium, that a mixture between the BBC and the Independent Broadcasting Authority could be set up as a new authority. But I think that the Hunt Committee took the view that such a body would inevitably be a little too protective of the existing services; and maybe that is true. So perhaps the Government have got it right in setting up a new authority.
I have spoken long enough. We shall have many bites at this cherry in the future—or, in view of my earlier remarks, perhaps I should say, at the apple. For the moment I would merely say that my noble friends and I are broadly in support of the development of cable. We think that it is inevitable, it must come. But we shall want to watch its development very carefully. We shall want to consider it all at each stage, and we hope, too, that there will be a controlling authority which will control in a positive, rather than a purely negative, sense.
I should like to conclude by mentioning one other matter of some importance. There is much worry by parents about how to stop their children watching undesirable programmes, and there is now all this talk about electronic locking devices. They are a farce. It is only the children who can work these things. My home is full of electronic devices that I cannot work at all. My seven-year-old grandson can work them admirably. Do not tell me, my Lords, that if I have an electronic locking device to stop him watching something, he will not be able to work it. I will not be able to work it, but he will.
The real way to tackle the problem is not to have devices, but to ensure that the programmes are good, and I hope that we can do that by having the right kind of authority, exerting the right kind of influence in the way in which over the years the Independent Broadcasting Authority has exerted its influence on all the different programme contractors here in Britain. It has exerted a positive influence which has had an immensely beneficial effect on the companies, and I hope that a new cable authority will do exactly the same. All I say is that for the moment, yes, we are in support, cautious support, but we shall watch with great vigilance future developments, and we shall reserve the right to comment on developments as and when they occur.
3.56 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Wakefield: My Lords, it is with considerable diffidence that I rise to make my maiden speech, not least when it is on a topic so complex as cable expansion and broadcasting policy. While it may be seemly for television cameras to chronicle the affairs of Barchester, it may not be immediately apparent why those in lawn sleeves should repay the compliment and busy themselves with cable television and the future of public service broadcasting. My pretext, if I need one, is that I am chairman of the Central Religious Advisory Committee. It is a fully ecumenical body, for it advises both the BBC and the IBA, and its members are drawn from the mainstream Churches of Britain and from some of the minority Churches, together with friends from the Jewish and Moslem communities.
We were one of the many bodies that submitted
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evidence to the Hunt Committee, as did the British Council of Churches, and the Church of England. The common theme of these three groups included the need to uphold the high quality of public service broadcasting—which has already been emphasised in the debate—and to ensure that cable television should not undermine these standards; the need, also, to provide a regulatory body to which the cable operators and programme makers were publicly accountable; and the needs, too, of the local community which cable television might meet.
As I read the report, I do not find that there are various sufficient safeguards for public service broadcasting, and I do not think that they are truly adequate, though I very much welcome the safeguards that the Hunt Committee puts forward. In particular I think that the "must carry" rule, so that our existing radio and television services remain part of the total package, is a wise provision; so, too, is the protection of the great national sporting events, so that they are not limited to the 40 per cent. or so who can obtain cable television, or who can afford to pay for it. For the same reason I applaud the rejection of "pay-per-view" for individual programmes. I also very much welcome the assurance that the committee gives us that cable operators should be bound by existing standards of good taste and decency, that they should avoid material offensive to public feeling, and should pay special attention to programmes broadcast when large numbers of children and young people may be viewing.
But when it comes to the subscription channel, showing so-called adult material, I believe that I am not alone in thinking that the committee's reliance on an electronic lock might be somewhat naive. So I hope that when it comes to consider these matters, the Home Office will insist on the same constraints on programme quality as are observed by the IBA and the BBC. I hope, too, that it will not countenance "open channels" for pornographic material, such as exist in the United States.
I find that the report says many brave things about cable as supplementary, and not as a rival or an alternative, to public service broadcasting. It says that cable is for widening the viewers' choice, for being innovative, experimental, and sensitive to local feeling. But I am not entirely persuaded by the arguments put forward. After all, the fundamental premise of the report is that,
"investment in cable television for entertainment purposes will be the necessary base".
That is the foundation on which the later, interactive services of economic benefit to business and the individual will be built. But I find that by this reasoning cable requires a popular entertainment base in order to attract large audiences, extensive rental revenues and subscriptions and substantial money from advertising—for, after all, investors rightly need a return on their money. I believe there is a basic question as to how long public service broadcasting of present quality can continue to co-exist with entertainment-led cable with so few regulations as the Hunt Committee Report puts forward. Therefore, I support those speakers who wish to see the regulatory body looked at very carefully and with some vigilance. For in order to prosper, cable must be able to pay

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popular entertainers and writers more than the going rate at the BBC and the ITV. It has in some way to lure them to its own services. It will also inevitably attract some advertising money away from the independent companies. So, either way, the cost of making programmes seems likely to rise, and this may well mean that the BBC and independent television will have less money available for programmes of the other kind that they do so well—programmes of drama, music, the arts and of minority interests—and the costs of those have already been spoken about and given to us by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. The quality and diversity of programmes, I think, may be at risk, and there could be the prospect, not of wider choice but really of narrower choice in terms of quality. We have already heard some anxieties expressed on the absence of a quota to restrict the import of cheap programmes from abroad, and there are fears being noised that the British television production industry may itself be put at risk unless it has a sounder financial base.
I therefore support those who believe that a stronger regulatory body for cable may very well be needed, and I think vigilance is required. It will be needed to ensure the continued viability of the British television production industry; to ensure that the performance and practice of cable operators really match the promises that they put forward; and to secure the necessary variety, quality and overall balance of programmes. I should like to see a much stronger provision than the report allows for local community programming, and for access by local groups to cable television. Simply to presume and to hope, as the report does, that this will happen is not really strong enough. Locally-based cable television could provide a community service complementary to the local press and local radio. It could help to increase the sense of identity of the local community; and it is in that setting that I see the local churches making their contribution in community programmes.
I am sure the report is right to exclude religious and political groups from ownership of the operating companies, and to debar such groups from buying their way into programme-making. Moreover, the model of the Electronic Church in the United States is to many of us really rather abhorrent. I hope that that will have no place as cable television develops in our country. The Churches' involvement should always be in the common public discourse of our community.
Without stronger regulation of cable television, the report's safeguards for public service broadcasting as they now stand are, I think, insufficient. I should like to see them strengthened, or else we may have to accept that the public service may begin to decline. Of course, the new technology has immense potential, and those who are going to operate it will have great influence and power in our society. As a society, are we content that that influence should so largely rest with those providing popular entertainment for commercial profit? In such hands, the new technology could well dictate, and possibly restrict, the quality and range of programmes in the overall reception on our screens.
Fundamentally, I think we have to ask ourselves: What are the moral, the cultural and the spiritual
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qualities that we wish to uphold and project in our society? What values in the family, which receives the programmes on the screen, do we really cherish and foster? The Government are known to have expressed particular concern and interest in the wellbeing of the family, in the importance of strong family life. I think we need to answer these questions on the values of society and the family before we go on to decide precisely the kind and quality of cable television we want in our homes and the kind of people who should be entrusted to handle it. My Lords, I am very grateful to your Lordships for your courteous and patient hearing of my maiden speech, and I am looking forward immensely to listening to other noble Lords as they make their speeches in the course of the debate.
4.7 p.m.
Lord Aylestone: My Lords, it is my great pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield. He comes to us with a great deal of knowledge of broadcasting, acting at one time as chairman of CRAC (which, if I may interpret, is the Central Religious Advisory Committee) and, earlier than that, as religious adviser to the BBC. He has shown by his maiden speech that his interests are not only in the religious section of broadcasting but in broadcasting generally, and we shall be delighted to hear from him on very many more occasions on this and other subjects.
The House is indeed grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, for initiating the debate; and, of course, to the Leader of the House for making possible a debate of worthwhile length. I personally welcome the coming of the cable infrastructure into our homes and into village halls, or wherever it may come, and the many possibilities it offers—which, of course, are not covered by the remit of Lord Hunt's committee. The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, briefly mentioned the other possibilities. I am sure of one thing—and I hope that perhaps he will agree with me. When cable comes in for broadcasting or for any other purpose, whether by copper, by co-axial cable or by fibre optics, by the time we have got it going those systems will have become obsolescent, if not obsolete, and we shall have moved on to something else. I think that from a technical point of view we should always have that in mind.
But today we are discussing the provision of additional television programmes by cable. In my view, in the early years it can do nothing much other than serve areas of large populations, unless, of course, the Government, when they reach a decision, decide to subsidise heavily the cable provider—and it will need heavy subsidising if anything like the area of the British Isles is to be covered. But what cable could do—and, here again, it may need to be subsidised—is to bring television into the very few areas and islands that are not yet in receipt of either BBC or IBA programmes.
I feel that we should not lose sight of the fact that at the moment the report in front of us is just a report to the Government, and that the Government's decision is to follow. The report and, I hope, this debate will be of help to them. I read, probably wrongly, that they are likely to reach some sort of decision before Christmas. I do not think that the particular newspaper specified

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which Christmas. I hope that the decision will not be too long delayed.
The report proposes the setting up of a financing authority. The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, called it a cable authority. Probably neither of us is correct, because the unborn child has not yet got a name, but I call it the franchising authority because it seems to be limited to very few powers indeed—the granting of franchises, yes; and just one more, a function to monitor programmes. And that is all. These are, indeed, very limited powers as I will endeavour to point out and as one or two other speakers have pointed out already. Maybe this limitation of power is supposed to grant greater freedom to the broadcasters by cable than they would at the moment get from the BBC or IBA. I ask: freedom from what or freedom for what? This is a problem that has not yet been sorted out; it is a problem that has not yet been answered; and neither does Hunt answer it.
Every time one criticises cable television one is told, "Ah! But this is freedom". Well, let us see what it means. First of all, how is it to be paid for? The report proposes that rental charges, subscription charges, should be collected from cable viewers by the franchising authority who themselves are to have no say in what charges are to be levied. There is one point to be made there. I agree with the Hunt Committee that rental and subscriptions will not be enough and I doubt very much if there is a great deal of advertising revenue for them to draw upon additional to what is already being collected by the broadcasters. There is no bottomless pit of advertising revenue.
Let us recall what we are doing at the moment. We sustain 15 independent television contractors, four programme makers and 38 independent local radio stations—all of them at the moment on the air, with some 30 more still to come—all financed and to be financed by advertising revenue. In addition, we finance the Fourth Channel, we finance the new Welsh channel and before very long we shall be financing breakfast television—all from advertising revenue.
I should declare a small interest in an independent local radio station, but it is a small interest. And I only do that to point out that in the rural areas independent local radio stations are struggling, struggling very hard, for national advertising revenue. The Government themselves very wisely have realised that there is a limit to advertising revenue; because they decided to reduce the levy which is paid by programme contractors to enable the Fourth Channel to get off the ground and on the air. There is a limit to what television advertising revenue can do and there will be a limit to what is available for cable.
I have just one or two words about programme content. First, the proposed franchising authority have no say whatever in programme content. According to the Hunt suggestion, they may just monitor programmes. What does that mean? It means no previewing of programmes, no control over programmes, no requests that a programme maker should take something out or, perhaps, put something in—no control whatsoever. But if a programme goes out that ought not to have been broadcast, then they have the authority, as monitors, of being able to slap somebody's wrist afterwards. Nor have the proposed authority any control over the scheduling of
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programmes—that is, how the programmes work out within a particular day—or their content. And all this, presumably, in the name of freedom.
As has been mentioned two or three times already, there is to be no limit on foreign material broadcast by cable. There is such a control at the moment. I think that I am right in saying that there is a 14 per cent. limit on foreign material—which means that 86 per cent. of broadcast material is British. I say "British", but I think that may include Commonwealth material. If foreign material is to be used without any limit, as is suggested by the report, I am sure that British actors and producers will be interested and I am sure that the trade unions within the industry will have something to say.
There is to be no limit at all on the amount of advertising on cable television. At the moment, on independent television the limit is six minutes in the clock hour, and on independent radio nine minutes. The proposal of this report suggests no limit on cable. Also, it is suggested that both BBC and independent television programmes should be taken freely "off air". I do not object to that but I wonder if anything is to be paid for it, because it may not be known generally that actors and actresses and people who take part in programmes currently expect repeat fees when a programme is repeated from time to time.
Still on programme content, as the right reverend Prelate reminded us, we are told that cable television will be required, as the BBC and ITV are by statute required, to adhere to standards of good taste and decency. Having had some experience of this, I can assure your Lordships that those statutory requirements are not always easy to observe, but—and it is a big "but"—I understand that it is very doubtful whether the Obscene Publications Act 1959 or the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981 will apply to cable television at all or even to video. Perhaps the noble Lord when he replies will tell us whether I am right or wrong in that respect. It is, of course, possible for both pieces of legislation to be amended.
Finally, the report suggests that foreign investors may invest in British cable television. Do we really want that? One knows the story of the piper who calls the tune. But, wearing a different hat, an old hat now—something like seven years old—I would only suggest to the Government, if I may, that in making their decision they should bear in mind that there is in existence an authority, the IBA, which has massive experience in all the programme controlling, the granting of franchises, scheduling, controlling of advertising content and everything else that it is hoped will be done but which the proposed franchising authority has no authority to do. May I add a final word to people like myself and, I should think, to many more of limited means? Think hard and think very long before you invest money in cable television.
4.19 p.m.
Lord Pender: My Lords, speaking for the first time to your Lordships, I hope that you will extend the indulgence which is customary on these occasions. Having listened to several maiden speeches in your Lordships' House, I am at this moment dramatically aware of the divide between spectating and

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participating. I would add that I have no interest to declare except an historical association with cable companies. In 1851, my great-great-grandfather founded the original cable companies which in due course became Cable and Wireless Limited in 1929, then experienced a period of nationalisation from 1947 to 1981, and were then privatised. Four successive generations of my family served those companies during their working lives.
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, for initiating this debate on a subject that engulfs such wide and far-reaching issues, some of which must inevitably be controversial. It seems astonishing that a report of such clarity could be produced within a six months' period. There are many issues to be considered as a result of recommendations from the report, ranging from the formation of an oversight authority, the basis and time schedule of franchise, to the questions of impartial presentation and decency standards—to name some of the major ones.
Since publication of the Hunt Report, perhaps too much attention has been focused on the entertainment aspects of cable television. As a result, we may be in danger of underestimating both the potential of cable and the complexity of the issues which need to be resolved in order to launch it successfully. It is vital in this Year of Information Technology that we recognise the long-term prospects of the interactive services which can be provided if two-way cable is installed. If we are to be serious about keeping Britain in the forefront of technological advance we must ensure that local cable operators make provision for these interactive services. No doubt these will take time to develop fully; but we should not regard burglar alarms, meter readings, even telebanking and teleshopping, as the limit of their potential.
Although local operators will clearly start in the cities and urban districts, we should not underestimate the great benefits and economies that will also accrue to rural dwellers. We should be planning a new era of communication between home and home or between home and office. The value of cable in the sphere of telecommunications is far greater than the significance of bringing in a few extra TV channels to the home. May I suggest that we do not lose this opportunity? It goes without saying how important it is to get the technological and institutional framework right.
We in this country had commercial television in the 1950s; a third channel in the 1960s; colour television in the 1970s; the fourth channel, breakfast television and television satellite channels in the 1980s. I hope that, after all the implications have been thought through, we shall be able to embrace cable television in the 1990s. My Lords, I thank you for listening to me.
4.23 p.m.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, I have the privilege on behalf of the whole House of offering congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Pender, on his maiden contribution to our debates. With his forebears, he probably has a greater right to take part in a debate of this kind than any of us; and certainly in manner, tone and substance, his speech was wholly in keeping with the highest traditions of this House. I am quite certain
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that the founder chairman of Cable and Wireless would have been pleased and proud at the speech which has just been made by his great-great-grandson. I have only one piece of advice to offer the noble Lord: I venture to suggest that he does not wait another 17 years before he comes and speaks in our House again.
Having referred to the caution displayed by the noble Lord, I am proposing to go on to say that I think that the Government may well exercise the greatest degree of caution before they go on to implement some of the possibilities that now lie before us. I should like to pay a tribute to those members of the inquiry who produced such a persuasive report with such expedition. I am bound to add, however, reservations about the terms of reference within which they worked.
The inquiry started off with the Government's apparent view that there were benefits to cable technology and there was expressed willingness in the terms of reference to consider an expansion of these cable systems. The report does not query in any way the underlying assumptions that Britain needs what is called this wider range of information. I think that it would not have been unreasonable to have had an inquiry with a much more fundamental basis looking much more deeply as to what is needed and what is possible with these great, new physical advances. Have we really got it right if we say that lack of resources requires the closure of geriatric wards in our hospitals and threatens children's hospitals like Tadworth, yet at the same time we can coolly contemplate spending these thousands of millions of pounds in our economy?
The report says in paragraph 9 that it is wholly a question of widening the viewers' choice. I beg leave to wonder about this. Of course it is said that these brave new developments can be self-supporting, that they will be or could be commercially viable. The inquiry took evidence which suggested that the new system could attract more advertising. We are told that in 1980 1·32 per cent, of our gross national product went on advertising and the practitioners claimed that by 1995 the money spent on this kind of advertising can go up to £2,900 million a year. The implication of this is that the new programmes could therefore be supported on this additional advertising. However, we have to recognise that it is not the advertiser who pays, it is the consumer. These new cable services are as much a charge on our national economic effort as the Tadworth Children's Hospital or the old folks' home at Tooting.
If we come to advertising, then inevitably we are up against the problems of standards and of the issues of taste and decency—the issues which ought to have been considered much more deeply than they were by a Government inquiry. The report comments in paragraph 10 that:
"A high standard will not however necessarily be maintained of its own accord,"
I should have thought that that was an understatement of some distinction. In paragraph 72, very diffidently, almost apologetically—and they emphasise that they do not wish to appear prudish—the report suggests that we should ask that,
"traditional broadcasting requirements relating to taste and decency",
will be observed. I am not quite sure which tradition

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they had in mind. John Reith sought to establish a tradition. I recognise that there has been and there is an honourable attempt by some of those in present public broadcasting authorities to maintain a sense of decency; but we have fallen, and we do fall very often, below those standards of John Reith. It would be very difficult to say that some of the behaviour, which we all deprecate on the football field and in law and order, is not due in part to that deviation from John Reith's standards.
Of course, the deterioration of standards set in when there is a pressure to increase the number of viewers, listeners or readers. The report says in paragraph 64 that "the main potential threat" comes from securing large audiences by popular programming. The noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, from his very wide experience says that some of these estimates of available advertising revenue are probably optimistic and that there will be a greater struggle to get a share of the advertising revenue that is going. The struggle for a share of that limited sum will inevitably be a struggle for a wider audience, and the struggle for a wider audience will inevitably be a temptation to drift to a lower common standard—indeed, to the lowest common denominator.
I look back now, as I suppose we all do, over a period of years in public life. The other day I was thinking about what I like least about what has happened since some of us came back from, as we thought, the fight against Fascism in 1945. What is it that I like least? I would say that possibly the sickliest, the least healthy, the saddest feature has been the development of the old Daily Herald into the current Sun newspaper. It would be positively hateful to think that some of those same market forces which have driven down the standards of some of our popular newspapers could be exerted to widen audiences and bring down the standards in our broadcasting system.
I am quite certain that those who constituted the inquiry would support all this in principle. It is in keeping with their civilised expectations. I thought the tone which came through that report of the standards which they sought was absolutely fine; but the practical measures for ensuring that their hopes are realised are, I believe, insubstantial. Monitoring the present services, as the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, said, is difficult enough, but the problem presented if we have a multiplication of national and local channels and services needs much more serious consideration.
One positive recommendation is made in the report. I find, with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, and the right reverend Prelate, that the recommendation relating to the electronic lock is less than convincing. I read that there has been experience of its use in Tredegar and two other localities, but I should want much more evidence before I accepted that this was a satisfactory way of keeping children free from unsettling or unsavoury programmes. We have a law to prevent the sale of alcohol to children. We have the system of certification to keep children out of certain cinemas during the showing of certain films. But the idea that the son and daughter can be kept in the kitchen while mother and father look at these less reputable programmes is stretching credulity beyond reasonable limits. The very fact that this piece of
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technology exists—this key to the forbidden—is going to be a challenge to every schoolboy. I can well imagine, going to school every morning, that there will be a boast as to who got hold of it the previous evening, and the lad who has not undone the electronic lock will be looked upon as something of a curiosity.
The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, acknowledged that there were genuine anxieties in this area. I am not sure that I agree with him or with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that experience since the early 1950s wholly justifies the optimism which he displays. I am not sure that the facts suggest that the experience has been wholly beneficial. Look at the statistics in the United States concerning robbery, rape and murder and ask yourselves whether standards of behaviour have improved since the beginning of the 1950s. It is very difficult to say that they have improved. It is also very difficult to say that some of the forms of entertainment available over radio and television have not contributed to what some would say is a decline.
I am ready to accept that those opportunities for good which obviously lie in this new technical possibility could be used for the greater happiness of society and of its individual members, but we must also accept—here I agree with my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede—that the opportunity can be misused. The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, in winding up his speech, earnestly hoped that we should not allow any delay in operating these new channels. I hope, equally earnestly, that before we do give the go-ahead we shall make as sure as possible that the motivation is right and that the safeguards are there.
4.36 p.m.
Lord Glanusk: My Lords, first may I thank my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing for starting this debate and congratulate the previous maiden speakers upon having successfully survived their ordeal. I hope I can do the same. I should also like, with your Lordships' usual indulgence, to offer an explanation, if not an apology, for my behaviour. I have been a member of your Lordships' House for 34 years, yet am only now making my maiden speech. After 17 years in the Royal Navy I have been endeavouring to earn my living and I retired at the beginning of the year as managing director of a small telecommunications company. Although I carried the title of managing director, a more accurate description of my function would have been chief telephonist and assistant packer. This meant that I did not have the time to attend your Lordships' House on anything like a regular basis. I felt it was better to apply for leave of absence rather than to appear to be using the facilities of the House as an exclusive and inexpensive club. I feel certain that other hereditary Peers, particularly the younger ones, find themselves in similar circumstances, possibly to the detriment of the composition of your Lordships' House.
I turn now to the matter under discussion. I have read with interest the Hunt report and am basically in agreement with it. If private enterprise is prepared to put up the capital and carry the undoubted risks involved, I do not believe that the Government should stand in their way—subject, of course, to the safeguards which the Hunt Committee has recommended. The report emphasises the high cost of

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the initial cable installation, with the consequent increase in rental subscription if the operating company is to show a profit on its shareholders' investment in a reasonable period of time.
Since the report was written there have been suggestions that the national sewerage system should be used for the cable routes. At first this may sound unattractive to your Lordships, but I believe that on reflection the advantages will become apparent. I have checked with the research department of the water authority. They inform me that 96 per cent. of all houses in England, Wales and Scotland are now connected to main drains. This is a truly remarkable figure and is, I am assured, the highest for any country in the world. It is also not far short of the national coverage for broadcast television. In addition, there are frequent access points along the sewerage route for any repeater or switching circuits which may be required. The domestic manhole covers are seldom more than a few feet away from each home. This means that very expensive digging up of roads and pavements can be virtually eliminated and should result in a considerable saving in the initial capital costs, which are conventionally estimated at somewhere between £150 and £500 per installation. This cheaper method of access may not, I regret, be available to all the stately homes of your Lordships, some of which are rather remote from a main drain.
One difficulty about this scheme is that the atmosphere inside a sewer may not be the most suitable for conventional coaxial cable, which can have its insulation destroyed by damp and by the microbiological agencies which may exist therein. On the other hand, fibre optics could avoid such difficulties, being made of very pure glass, impervious to water and very unattractive to rats. At present a glass fibre cable is somewhat more expensive than coaxial cable, but once manufacturers can see the large volume required, with several schemes being started simultaneously in different areas of the country, the price of glass fibre cable will be rapidly reduced, probably below that of coaxial cable. From this point of view it would be important that several franchises be granted at very much the same time.
As mentioned already by my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing, I would like to see more attention being given to other facilities which might be supplied over a multi-channel system over and above that of pure (and I use the word advisedly) entertainment. It is probable that at this moment there is insufficient demand to justify the cost, but in my opinion it is clear that within the next five years or so there will be a demand for such services as have been mentioned already—banking, shopping, job-hunting, small ads, advanced education, meter reading, burglar alarms and many others. These will require an interactive system; that is, one in which the viewer needs to respond over the cable as a result of promptings from a remote source, and vice versa.
Some companies are already running remote interactive offices, so that such people as area sales representatives with a mini-computer installed in their homes, can easily communicate with their head offices or central computers without the hassle and expense of travelling and parking. One can even imagine that if
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the British Post Office continues to increase its charges, it will soon be economical to transmit letters by an advanced facsimile system. Even now it is possible to transmit an A4 sheet of typing in one minute over the switched telephone network, at the same price as a one minute telephone call, with instantaneous reception by the addressee. This latter point may be of enormous advantage to some businesses and even to some individuals.
Such services will, I believe, be beyond the capacity of a single coaxial cable and can only be achieved by a fibre optic one. If my surmises are correct, it would be foolish laying a near-nationwide coaxial system which will last only the lifetime of the first franchises and will then have to be completely replaced by a new system at similar costs. It would appear that urgent studies are required into the technical merits and comparative costs of the two types of cable and into the additional services other than entertainment which could be economically provided at a later date.
I am aware that some of the hardware and switching for a fibre optic system is still under development or on field trials, both in industry and in British Telecom, but, by the time that the cable authority is formed and functioning and franchises have been applied for, all the necessary hardware could be ready for production. Even now some companies are actively supplying British Telecom and Cable and Wireless—as has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Pender—with fully operational communication systems using fibre optic techniques. This shows that the know-how is, or soon will be, readily available.
These are only two points taken from the Hunt report. I am sure that other noble Lords are far more qualified than I to talk on such important matters as the composition of the central franchising authority and the control and monitoring of the quality of the entertainment supplied. May I summarise by saying, let us use the fastest and most advanced techniques available and, in these depressed times, give the British electronic and entertainment industries a firm and lasting boost in advance of our European competitors.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Annan: My Lords, I am quite sure the first thing that your Lordships will wish me to say is that it has been worth waiting 34 years to hear a speech of such expert knowledge and containing so many ingenious suggestions, which I am sure are going to be of great value to those who study this debate. I do congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Glanusk, very sincerely and I congratulate also the very notable maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Pender, and of my old friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield, who managed as usual to blend both charm and wisdom in what he said. Indeed, congratulations go to other people, such as the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, and in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his report. I agree with everything that has been said about its being a model of what a report should be, and it is very much shorter than other reports to do with broadcasting that I can think of.
I should like to engage in the debate which has gone on about programme standards and the authority which is to be set up, but I will leave that to others. The noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, is entirely right when he

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says that one is bound to have much less control over cable television than over public television because it is what people are prepared to pay for. One can, of course, make it impossible for any cable company to operate, if one insists on regulations so strict and so much in conformity with those for public television that one makes it impossible for companies to operate. That, I thought, was the thrust of the Hunt Report. In that report the noble Lord appears really to be saying, "Do please remember that this is a slightly different animal and the people here have opted to pay for this particular kind of television. Therefore, you need a different kind of regulation." I know that viewpoint has been challenged in your Lordships' House this evening but I am bound to say that I believe Lord Hunt understood this extremely well in his report and got it right.
We can of course argue that there is not going to be enough advertising to go round and that the advertising revenue which is drained and sucked away by cable television will have an adverse effect on commercial television under the IBA. But in the end these are matters on which the Government have to decide whether there is too great a risk or not. It seems to me perfectly clear that the Government have already decided that this addition to television is something that they would like to encourage as a means of investment and as a means of job production. It seems to me that these are the reasons—not a lack of television at this particular moment. We have just had a fourth channel and we are just about to get breakfast television—a great blessing, no doubt. Then in 1986 we are going to have two satellite channels. Therefore it cannot be a lack of provision which the Government have in mind. What they want is to create jobs.
Here again, I wonder how much the entertainment industry will get in spin-off. I believe that there will be some spin-off, but not much. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has been attacked for allowing completely free imports of foreign films or programmes, but one has to say that the restrictive practices of ACCT are such that one is almost bound to welcome anything which may get ACCT to loosen up. Nevertheless, we have to face the fact that it is going to be a major challenge to public broadcasting in this country.
I believe it is right to have lenient restrictions at the beginning of any new venture. That is what happened in practice with commercial television. In the early days, very wisely I think, the regulations on exactly the programme content, and so on, were of a lenient nature. The standards were not high but the programmes were very popular, and after a time it became possible to see how one could regulate and improve the quality of what was being offered. I have always believed that we have had a real genius in this country for the art of public regulation of our media, and that in fact the way it has been done, the timing of improving quality, is one of the things which I think we have every reason to be proud of.
I am much less happy in the way that the report has gone when the freedom, which is to be given apparently to cable companies and generally to providers of these services, is applied to the technology of cable. It seems to me that foreign companies are really almost being invited to capture our markets, and
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that nothing is being done to help the British industry or to give this country the technology of tomorrow. I very much doubt, for instance, whether it is wise to allow foreign companies who want to invest in the cable industry to manufacture and install their own cable equipment.
If the Government are really in earnest about creating the beginnings of a national network, then they must insist that cable can carry from the start not only entertainment but also the interactive services; that is to say the transfer services which are of use to commerce and industry. This means setting up strict minimum standards for performance. It also means, so I am informed by electronic engineers, the installing of star networks rather than tree and branch networks, even if it takes two or three years to develop these systems and perhaps even a fourth year to perfect the fibre glass equipment which I believe will be needed for the system to work most efficiently. If we do this we shall then be able to develop a really strong home market for our own electronic industry, because without that home market there will be no hope whatsoever of capturing the European market, which I think is the only one which is really open to us.
Therefore I venture to suggest that the Government ought to insist on fibre optic technology, or, if that creates too great opposition, insist on cable being laid in the next five years of a kind which is capable of being adapted to this star network system. Then there will be a chance that our home industry will not be destroyed by foreign competition. If the Government do not do this, I think that any chance of obtaining overseas markets will be lost. I would therefore ask the Government to consider the technical aspects of this new industry with the greatest of care. If we go for quick profits and the quick creation of jobs we may lose in the long run; I do not say we shall but we may.
If we allow the technologies of other countries, with their inferior standards, to be imposed upon us, we shall sabotage the most profitable of all our industrial markets in the future. Britain must impose its own technical standards, and they must be those which are appropriate to the technology of tomorrow and not the technology of yesterday. So whatever we do we must not allow cable television, which is going to serve initially only a very few people, to jeopardise the communications network of the 21st century. The really important issue, so it seems to me, is not the advantage of optic fibres over coaxial cable; the really important thing is the design of the network. If Britain is to be wired for information in the 21st century, I am informed that you must have some sort of a star system with fairly sophisticated route switching and signalling, similar to that used in a telephonic international system. If you allow a tree and branch system to grow you will not be able to fit it on to a national broad band interactive network.
Perhaps I should explain that a star system resembles the spokes in a wheel. If the person at one end of a spoke wants to talk to another at the end of another spoke he can do so very easily by linking up through the centre. But the leaves on a tree and branch system, which grows haphazardly, means that someone on a leaf cannot communicate to another leaf with similar ease, because all the traffic has to be

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received in the centre and then sorted out for the individual sender.
Although I know it is fashionable these days to sneer at British Telecom. I ask myself whether we should not recognise that there is great merit in having a common carrier. Who else should be the major provider and maintainer of the national grid but British Telecom? It has the most expertise. It already works as an existing broadband network. It controls the ducts already in the ground which will carry the cables.
Therefore, finally, I suggest that we ought to keep the cable network provider quite separate from the programe providers. If you do so, you will be able to have more than one provider of programmes in a particular area, or at any rate you will have a range of services. Furthermore, the programme provider should lease the network from the cable provider. The subscribers should not be charged, as they would be if the programme provider were to buy and install the system. So all I am asking this evening from the Government is this: will they please keep as their primary objectives the long-term benefits of a national communications network; and, secondly, will they see to it that so far as possible British industry benefits, because that is the way to create jobs?
4.58 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Annan, whose expertise in this area is so well known as to need no support from me. May I say that I found myself in a very great deal of agreement with what the noble Lord had to say. I also should like, if I may, to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, for introducing the debate. I think he has benefited not only our House but in the end the Government which he supports, because this is a subject which I believe has been insufficiently examined so far and in starting that examination the noble Lord has performed a service. May I also add my commendation to the three maiden speeches which have added to this occasion?
We live in a time of a communications explosion and it has been happening throughout our lifetime. This is the latest stage in the proceedings, and this is not the only or the most important part of that stage. We live in this period, and the whole process is accelerating. There is, however, one disquieting aspect to this explosion, and that is that by and large there seems to have been, with the increase in volume, a decrease in quality. I think that anybody who looks at our national press, for example, and compares what we have available over its whole range today with what was available 20, 30 or more years ago could hardly fail to say that in terms of quality the national press today does not match the press that we enjoyed some time ago.
That decrease in quality has been arrested and prevented in the radio and television media in this country by a process of regulation. This process of regulation has not taken place elsewhere; and in other countries we have seen excesses and the same decrease in quality which has taken place in other media. So the example that we have to follow here is the creation of a measure of control over the spread of communications. We have charged the authorities which we have established with the duty of sustaining
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quality and of not allowing radio or television in this country to decline to the level of the equivalent of page 3 of the Sun newspaper.
Therefore, I am a little disquieted that the report does not seem to recognise that necessity of control which has existed elsewhere in this area. I listened last night, as I believe other noble Lords may have done, to some advocates of cable in Committee Room 10 in another place. They were honest and able men, but none of them seemed to be concerned with the quality of the product. They were for the most part technicians, and well-informed, but I did not get the impression from the presentation that the benefit was exactly apparent. I have also listened to the debate we are enjoying today and still I do not understand quite what it is. What is the urgency? Why do the Government want to go ahead so quickly? What will the benefit be? It does not seem to me that the listener or the viewer will obtain any great advantage. As far as advertising is concerned I suspect cable may spread the advertisements. The trouble with that is that, since a major part of our present television and radio network—and, indeed, the press as well—depends upon advertising, the consequence of spreading advertising may still further decrease the revenue available to, for example, the IBA and the press, with the result that further newspapers will disappear. Will the quality of commercial television programmes seriously decline because they simply will not have the money having to spread it over a much wider area?
There is already some concern about that in relation to Channel 4. This explosion could have grave consequences which we ought to look at rather carefully. The report states:
"Our terms of reference told us to assume the Government's willingness to consider an expansion of cable systems for entertainment and other services, but in a way which would safeguard public service broadcasting".
It does not seem to me that the report has laid sufficient emphasis on that latter part of the terms of reference. I do not see in the report a sufficient degree of safeguard for public service broadcasting. Neither do I see that the new development would itself have the characteristic of public service broadcasting which both our existing channels have, financed as they are in very different ways—one by licence and the other by advertising. Nevertheless, the existence of the degree of control to which I referred, exercised fundamentally through Acts of Parliament but secondarily through the boards and corporations created under them, has sustained the quality element. I do not see sufficient concern about that aspect in the report.
Yesterday we had another report on another part of the communications explosion. The report comes from an advisory panel presided over by Sir Antony Part. It is about direct broadcasting by satellite. Sir Antony Part's report states that direct broadcasting by satellite is due to start in the autumn of 1986, with two extra broadcasting channels provided by the BBC. The Government have three further channels at their disposal and at least one of them is likely to be applied for by the IBA as soon as the law is changed to allow it to do so. My own view is that the Government would do well, in the interests of all concerned in this matter, to drag their feet a little. It would be desirable from technical and other points of view that, as Mr. Whitelaw said in another place, the satellite proposal

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which, as Sir Antony Part's report indicates, is due to start in the autumn of 1986 should run parallel with cable. When satellite broadcasting begins, there is very likely to be a necessity for an extension, to say the least of it, of cable distribution. By that time the fibre method of distribution is more likely to be technically available than it is now. If we go ahead with this quickly we shall probably find ourselves with a coaxial system which will be difficult to convert to the other more satisfactory system.
Therefore, our message to the Government is that they should be careful. They may be making the sort of mistake which in another area of communications was made by those who chose the airship instead of the internal combustion engine as a means of getting about the world. I suspect that, although cable is going to expand, that expansion is one which should be timed for two or three years hence rather than immediately.
The experts who spoke last night on this question were not people who were over-optimistic. Some of them took the view that much money could be lost in this area, and possibly some gained. Others said that the more extravagant notions of shopping by television, and so on, were something which they did not expect to see in their lifetime, although they are long-term possibilities. In other words, it should not be expected that all the extraordinary things which may ultimately become possible as a result of the extension of cable will happen in a year or two. Many of them are 10- or 20-year possibilities rather than immediate practicalities. Therefore, we should not delude ourselves too much about that.
I have two other points to make, and I shall try to be brief. First, it seems to me that this project is designed to make profits for those who operate it. There is no harm in that. Contrary to public supposition, I am not opposed to profit as such. However, if it is to make that profit, it must be inexpensive and, in practice, I am afraid, of low quality. It will have to rely—and this is the grave danger—on imported material for the major part of its programming. I believe that this ought to be stopped. To allow the importation into this country of majority programming which comes from a culture which has much to commend it, but which is different from our own, would be a very great mistake.
I do not take the view that because cable may be paid for by the individual the Government and the rest of us can divorce ourselves from responsibility for what it is like. Since much of it will be paid for by advertising in exactly the same way as the IBA is financed, we have the same sort of responsibility for programming as we have for the IBA, although fewer people will receive it and will do so by cable rather than by broadcasting.
I therefore believe that there should be a strong recommendation—in fact, I would make it rather more than a recommendation. I should like inserted in any Act of Parliament on this development an absolute rule that the 86 per cent. which operates for the IBA should operate for cable as well, so that the bulk of the material received through the cable would be British made. If it is not British made and if it cannot give our own film industry a boost instead of a smack in the eye from the point of view of those who
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are in the business of producing the material, this will do more harm than good.
There is also the problem of the cinema people, who are extremely anxious. Recently they have been going through a pretty bad time—and I am, of course, referring particularly to the exhibitors. They are extremely anxious for a measure of protection against the consequences of cable. They feel that the report does not give them the degree of protection to which they think they are entitled and which they must have if the cinema, as an exhibition industry in this country, is to survive.
I am most grateful to your Lordships for listening to me this afternoon and I am sorry that I had to bring you a message which is not one that is full of enthusiasm and drive saying, "Go ahead and get on with it". But, if I were to give your Lordships that message and if we found that we were launched upon a path which at a later time we had reason to regret, that would be no good service. We should think again before we support something which, in my view, must be watched very carefully indeed.
5.11 p.m.
The Earl of Bessborough: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, for moving this Motion. He has just expressed his regrets to me that he has been obliged to leave the Chamber for a short while. But I think he has, as other noble Lords have said, provided a useful service. I, too, shoud like to congratulate the three maiden speakers, all three of whom made a valuable contribution to this debate and, in their different ways, showed wisdom in the remarks which they made. I also consider that Lord Hunt's report is first class and, as other noble Lords have said, commendably brief.
I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Thompson, sitting on the Cross Benches and I regret that he is not taking part in this debate. However, as I said at a seminar over which he presided most admirably over the weekend, I feel in a sense that I have been here before. It is, indeed, 30 years since a group of friends—whom my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing knew well, too—who included the late Lord Renwick, the chairmen of Pye and EMI, Sir Alexander Korda, and my old friend Norman Collins, who, tragically, passed away quite recently, and your humble servant, formed a group to put on alternative programmes to the BBC. That group formed a company called the Associated Broadcasting Development Company—perhaps we should now revive it—which was known as ABDC. It was formed in 1952 and there were many qualms among members of the then Conservative Government, virtually the whole of the Labour Party, nearly all leading academics and church leaders, the film industry and of course the BBC, that the less reputable aspects of American commercial television would penetrate into British homes. Although I suppose one might now say that this has been partially true, it is also true to say that it was independent television which started the first educational and religious television programmes in Britain—as the right reverend Prelate will remember—and that broadcasting in this country, whether on television or on radio is of a higher quality than anywhere else in the world.

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But before all that happened there were fairly acrimonious debates in both Houses and in the country at large, and it was only three years later, in 1955, that independent television first came on the air and another two years, in 1957, before ITV became economically viable. In those two years my own company was ATV. I withdrew my interest in it when I joined the Government in 1963 and I no longer have any interest in the media except, like the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, in a small radio station appropriately named "Radio Victory". However, during those two years, that company, ATV lost £2 million, while the only other company, Associated Rediffusion, lost £4 million and Associated Newspapers pulled out of its London ITV company altogether.
I feel that that experience may well be instructive in examining the noble Lord, Lord Hunt's proposals, for now, 30 years later, there are other prospects concerning the expansion of television and communications generally, and a good many doubts are now being expressed, such as those expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, that perhaps the worst kind of cable programmes which can be seen in the United States will penetrate Europe. But, in my view, Lord Hunt's report answers these fears effectively. As, indeed, I think other noble Lords, including my noble kinsman Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, have said, the development of information technologies in this way will help reduce unemployment by creating many new jobs in the electronic industry and the cable business and by providing new programmes.
For some years now I have thought it curious that at any one time we only had three or four television programmes from which to choose. It seemed rather like having only three or four books on the shelves in your library. Now it is true that video tapes are beginning to take up some space, but still this remarkable medium is not in my view being used as fully and as effectively as it should be used for the best purposes. And I see no reason why, given the reasonably modest controls suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, we in Britain and in Europe might not lead the world in cable and satellite television with programmes of higher quality than those in the United States. I agree above all that we must preserve our own cultural traditions and not allow them to lapse.
Certainly, independent television in this country has shown that its standards are higher in substance and in quality than, by and large, those of the American networks. I see no reason why we in Europe should slavishly follow American patterns. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, on this point. Like, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Annan, I have looked at cable television in the United States and I cannot say that, of the very many programmes available in my hotel room in Los Angeles, there was much that I wanted to continue looking at, apart perhaps from the 24-hour cable news network. But, as I say, I think that we should create, as we have done previously, our own standards in Europe which could well be higher than those across the Atlantic.
I admit that I think it will take time before the many facilities which people may want, or are ultimately likely to want, will become available. I personally should like to have access to all present data banks on
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my own television screen—not merely Ceefax, Oracle and Prestel, which I do use—and I should like to be able to do my own banking and shopping on my own screen. Ultimately, I agree that I do not think that this is an immediate prospect. But I should certainly like to have access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and even Larousse, as I told the noble Lord, Lord Thompson, and the delegates who attended this high-powered and very interesting Franco-British seminar last weekend. But at present there is not a very lively demand for the facilities to which I have referred.
If it took some years for independent television to get going in Britain, in the view of some it may take longer to achieve 30 or more alternative cable television channels. But, like my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing, I hope that the Government will not delay in taking decisions. Satellite television is coming soon, but at present satellites alone sending programmes to dish aerials on home roofs would not be capable of supplying anything like the number of signals and programmes which cables could transmit, and especially, of course, fibre optic cables, which might well run into thousands of two-way channels. At all events, cable and satellites are, in my view, complementary and in no sense rivals. I understand, incidentally, that British Telecom is expected to announce shortly that an optical fibre telephone cable is to be laid under the English Channel. I assume that this will also be able to carry televised material and that within the foreseeable future such cables will traverse the oceans too.
Looking beyond the confines of our own islands, I should like to say a few words about the proposals of the European Commission on new information technologies. Some of your Lordships may have seen the report of your Lordships' own European Communities Committee on this subject. It concluded that it was essential to have a strong, thrusting and competitive information technology industry in the European Community and to improve the present fragmented structure.
Our Sub-Committee, over which the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, presided, thought that the European Commission was well-placed to take initiatives in this field. The Lords Committee was also of the opinion that the Community could not afford to be dependent for financial, strategic and social reasons, on imported technology.
I was also most interested in the European Commission's latest programme called the European Strategic Research Programme in Information Technology—ESPRIT. The acronym is perhaps an appropriate one. I hope that the Government will support the proposals of the Commission in regard to ESPRIT. Certainly I know that British, French and German firms are already working together. Common objectives have been identified for long-term research and development in information technology within Europe. I know from what my honourable friend Mr. Kenneth Baker, the Minister for Information Technology, has said that Her Majesty's Government welcome this European initiative and support the principle of international collaborative research.
If time had been available, I should have liked to speak for a moment on the Alvey Committee's report, the threat posed by the Japanese fifth generation

829
computer programme, and the American very highspeed, as well as very large-scale, integrated circuits. The Alvey Committee recommends a five-year £350 million collaborative research and development programme for advanced information technology between industry, the academic sector and industrial research facilities. This would be complementary to the European ESPRIT programme. I think that, in these matters and especially on the manufacturing side—after all, it begins with equipment—we should be European-minded and, indeed, internationally-minded, for, as I have said, I believe that two-way fibre optic cables may within the foreseeable future cross not only the Channel but also the ocean.
In coming to the end of my remarks there are just one or two further points that I should like to make. First—and I think that this subject has not been fully discussed this afternoon—there is pay-as-you-view or, as it is now called, pay-per-view. Recommendation 21 urges that this should not be permitted "for the time being". I believe that, if this were accepted, it would reduce private operators' revenue and slow the growth of cable systems. The measure reflects fears that cable operators will use pay-per-view income to outbid conventional broadcasters. However, I understand that the members of the British Cable Television Association have made it an "article of faith" that they will not bid for exclusive rights to these events. I believe that pay-per-view would be desirable for certain specialised, minority programmes and religious programmes. There are other points, but I see that I have exceeded the time which I have set myself.
I should just like to add that I think that the licence period proposed is not sufficient in the circumstances to attract investment, and that a licence period of, say, 15 years, would more justly recognise the immense commitment required. Otherwise and overall—apart from a few minor points—I think that there is a great deal of sense in the strategic approach of the Hunt Report. I hope that the Government will support it and that they will act swiftly in this new technology if we are to retain a lead and keep up with the others, for I know that both France and Germany have important programmes in mind. The French one has already been referred to by my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing. I hope that the Government will act promptly in this matter.
5.27 p.m.
Lord Hill of Luton: My Lords, I should like to join other noble Lords in expressing the warmest thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, for opening this debate, and congratulations to the maiden speakers who have contributed today. I propose to confine my remarks to the effect of the proposed cable development upon the existing broadcasting services. First, I take leave to doubt whether anybody can calculate—even the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his colleagues—what will be the advertising income five, 10 or 15 years ahead. One of the elements in their calculation is the size of the gross national product in 1995. How in Heaven's name can they engage in a calculation of that kind? Of course, they have the report, the advice and the estimates of the advertisers' own organisation, who say that there will be adequate money available in the future for all services. But then they would, would they not? After all, they want this
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great development of advertising opportunities.
Therefore, my first question is: to what extent, if any, will these proposals affect the income of independent television? Let us face it, if there is a substantial effect, it will result in a degradation of their programmes. What is the evidence? None can be sure, but when one bears in mind not only the £100 million as the target of Channel 4 and Breakfast Television (and who knows what the effect of the satellite development will be?), I suppose it might mean the intrusion of advertisements in programmes from Continental countries, probably in English. We do not know what the position is likely to be in the future in this matter of income for independent television. But this must be faced: if there is a substantial fall in that income, then there will be a substantial fall in the range and quality of the television they offer.
I am not going to comment on the cable technique. I do not understand it. I am not going to comment on the great happiness it is going to bring to the people of this county in its various domestic and other expressions. I have grown a little cynical about the developments which take place which are alleged to add greatly to human happiness and human efficiency. I am not so keen on the computerisation of bank statements. There was a time when I understood the incomings and the outgoings. But not now. It is only the young, as the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said, who can understand this sort of thing.
Let me continue on the subject of programmes. Lower income means lower quality. I start from that position. Let us consider what the Hunt Committee proposes to be the regulation, or absence of regulation, for cable television. No limit to the amount of advertising in the early stages, which may well become the later stages. The sponsoring of programmes by advertisers. Not to be subject to the requirements of range and balance. No restriction on films now reserved for the later hours. No prohibition on their earlier showing because of their unsuitability for children. I agree with the two noble Lords. I have a grandchild who will rumble this electronic device in no time, and I expect that we are all pretty well in the same position.
News is to be impartial. The rest does not need to be impartial. I know that when an assertion expresses our point of view we think of it as divinely impartial, and when the opposite point of view is expressed then we are indignant. But, really, can we accept a situation in which one of the competitors in television has no requirement for impartiality except in the news programmes? Is that a step forward? No constant supervision of programmes? No minimum requirement of British material, and no scrutiny in advance of advertisements?
What is going to be the result? I have no doubt in my mind that the result is going to be an enormous accession of viewers to this kind of television, subject of course to the fact that it will only be available to those who live in urban areas and can afford it. Let us recall what happened in the early days of independent television. The noble Lord, Lord Annan, said—and he was quite right—that there was a leniency in those days when they were striving to achieve solvency. There was a leniency. The authority looked the other way. What happened? They acquired 76 per cent. of

831
the audience, leaving the BBC with 24 per cent.
No doubt American programmes, for example, good, bad and indifferent, will attract people, with emphasis on entertainment. Bless my soul, the Guardian cannot compete with the Sun newspaper for circulation, and the position here will be that this free service—free in the intellectual sense; free from the inhibitions and regulations on other services—will have great success in its early days. But why not give the same freedoms to independent television? The same freedoms to the BBC? Why pick this particular development to have these freedoms?
Of course, we know the reason. This development, it is hoped, will be financed not by Government but by the investors. They are unlikely to come forward unless they can see a speedy development of large viewing publics, and they are to get this freedom—I use the word "freedom" without seeking to define it in this respect—to do all these things. They are things which of themselves will for the most part lead to the degradation of programmes, and to the trivial rather than the serious. One thing that is lost in that that is present today is how often people who believe that they like the trivial in their viewing find themselves, maybe by accident, watching a programme which is serious in content and find themselves interested, attracted, and are so led to what is now called minority-programming.
It seems to me that cable television, despite the blessings that are said to come from this kind of development, if it is to be free, if it can lack impartiality, if it can do all these things, will scoop the pool of viewers. You may think, let the people have what they want. The Independent Television Authority over the years, by its regulation, by its supervision, has converted a service which was trivial at the outset into one of equal esteem with the BBC today. It was done by previewing, not of programmes but of advertisements, and in 101 ways it has by regulation raised the standard of British broadcasting. It is proposed here to throw it away by permitting in cable television freedom from the restrictions that have served to raise the standard of our television.
I know, it is all too easy, we are apt to say that we have the best of everything from policemen onwards, but it is true that British broadcasting, both sound and television, occupies a very high place in the estimation of the world. Do not let us deny that, and do not let us give these liberties, these freedoms considered inappropriate for the two existing services, to this new development simply because it is desired to attract the investment to build the cable service rather than to use Government money. I really think that this business—not the project of cable—of the competitive conditions between the three services (as it will then be) needs to be examined. For the moment they are an invitation to a deterioration in British television as a whole.
5.39 p.m.
Lord Oram: My Lords, I found myself in a great deal of agreement with the notable speech from the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, to which we have just listened, not only on the major questions of principle with which he dealt so effectively but on his horror, which I share, of modern electronic devices. Indeed,
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when my noble friend Lord Beswick was casting doubt on the electronic lock as a means of protecting children from undesirable programmes I thought of my own experience with a recently acquired video. I thought I should need to ask my 15-year old son to lock the thing up in the first place; and my 14-year old son, I am sure, would have managed to get the secret as soon as I had left the house.
I, too, wish to begin by congratulating the three maiden speakers, to whom we listened with great benefit, and I am sure we hope to hear all three of them in subsequent debates. I particularly noted what the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Wakefield, said about the need to ensure that there is an adequate provision of local and community programmes. It is on that one theme that I wish to comment tonight, and I fear that in doing so I must start by being somewhat blatantly personal. It is not that I have any financial interest in these matters to declare—far from it—but I have a number of personal and family interests which are relevant to the main point I wish to make; namely, the great importance I attach to ensuring that all broadcasting systems (be they television or radio, BBC or ITV, cable or direct via satellite) should serve, rather than neglect, local community life.
It may be that my personal background and thinking on the matter explains that attitude. I live in Sussex and have been honoured to be asked to be president of the Society of Sussex Downsmen. I take a keen interest in local sporting activities. For some years I headed the large consumer-controlled Cooperative Society in that area. Recently, on the subject of broadcasting, I was glad to receive an invitation to be a trustee of the local independent radio station. I accepted that because the group of people who had been successful in getting the franchise for that station have, in my judgment, imaginative ideas for serving the local public, and it is that which attracts me. Not only do they hope, of course, to be financially viable, but they are hoping to raise additional funds which will be devoted to local good causes.
Therefore, when I came to read the Hunt Report I judged it, or at least parts of it, against that very background of my local interest, and in particular I noticed paragraph 44, where it is reported that local radio contractors are concerned that cable television will do independent local radio considerable harm. The Hunt Committee dealt with that point but, in my judgment, they dismissed far too easily the danger that was called to their attention.
A similar point is made by the Independent Broadcasting Authority in the pamphlet which they have sent to me and, no doubt, most other noble Lords. They stress in that that they have developed programme-making centres across the whole of the United Kingdom, with advantage, as they put it, to regional life and local job opportunities. They apparently see those activities of theirs as likely to be harmed by a cable television system which is too little controlled. My fear is that if the proposals of the Hunt Committee form the basis of the introduction of cable TV, those local interests and that regional life of which I have spoken will be at risk of being neglected. I say that because in paragraph 66 the Hunt Report says that it would be,
"artificial and unnecessary to place an obligation as to diversity on the totality of a cable system's output".

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That means, I believe, that cable TV would be fundamentally different from the present BBC and ITV channels, and under the impetus of uncontrolled advertising we should, despite protestations to the contrary, have merely mass entertainment to make maximum short-term profits, and the kind of programme I have in mind, serving local interests, would be squeezed out.
I am by no means comforted by the wording of paragraph 71, in which the Hunt Committee claim to deal with the question of local access. They start off by acknowledging the importance of local coverage, and when I read that my hopes were raised, but they go on, weakly in my view, to say that that is something which,
"could be left to be taken into account in the franchising process".
That is much too vague, much too general and, frankly, I do not believe it. It is my view that those political and commercial groups with the most money will be able to purchase the most programming time, and I have no doubt that local interests will be low in their list of priorities.
As I mentioned, the IBA have sent us a pamphlet in which, understandably, they praise their own work to the skies. I see the noble Lord, Lord Thompson, in his place and I hope he will not take that judgment amiss. I rather feel that their self-praise is a little overdone. Nevertheless—and this is my final point—I very much agree with their warning that unless we are careful, cable TV will provide the country with programmes distinctly inferior to those at present received from the IBA and BBC. For that reason I echo the words of a number of noble Lords in the debate that while, of course, we welcome the development of cable TV as a new and promising technique and facility, we must be very careful about how it is brought in, about the safeguards, and for that reason I do not think we are in a hurry.
5.48 p.m.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I wish to begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing for initiating this interesting debate and by adding my congratulations to those of others to the three maiden speakers, who each made a speech of great interest, so much so that we look forward with great pleasure to hearing them often again.
I also wish to mention, on a note of sadness, my old friend John Redcliff-Maud, from whose wife I received a note just before he died saying how much he had hoped to come and take part in this debate, because he was very interested in the subject. I would only say in passing, what I know everybody feels, and that is a feeling of great sorrow at losing a man whose brilliant personality was exceeded only by his generosity of heart and who leaves this a much poorer place.
I pay my tribute to the Hunt Report and Lord Hunt, who did the best he could with his terms of reference, which were very narrow. The way the debate has gone is in the fashion of the technical, technological and commercial advantages which can come from cable TV, on the one hand, and the dangers which can come, on the other, in the risk to the public broadcasting services, the BBC and ITV, and the general risk to the moral standards of taste and decency, which were effectively dealt with by the noble
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Lord, Lord Beswick. I agreed with every word he said. So my speech will be very short; and in saying my words of thanks I thank also my noble friend Lord Rochdale, sitting behind me, who has kindly allowed us to speak at the length at which we have spoken.
I want to speak about only one point—and I certainly could not agree with my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing that the message should be that the Government should go ahead with all speed. In fact, to my mind, to carry out the suggestion in the Hunt Report that the Government should use their existing powers to allow cable firms to start work immediately would be the gravest possible mistake when there are such major considerations still at risk. As I know from my own town, the cable companies are already around, looking for the most favourable sites, and they are ready to go just as soon as they can. But here I feel that there is a major conflict of interest. In most eloquent language there were developed by my old friend Lord Hill of Luton (who is not present at the moment, but who I hope will read what I have to say), and many other noble Lords, details of what is at risk in terms of the public broadcasting service, and how good it is. Well, I would say, how good most of it is, because I am not satisfied with some of it, since it is already suffering from a deteriorating trend. I have down for next week an Unstarred Question, and noble Lords and I intend then to develop that theme.
If, with all the moral force of the governors of the BBC and the IBA, we have not been able to check the downward trend, to maintain moral standards with regard to taste and decency, what hope shall we have with cable television? Really we should be turning our minds to the question of how we can devise new and adequate safeguards, on the one hand to preserve all that is good in the BBC and the IBA—and there is much that is; and heaven knows! we want to preserve it—and on the other hand to try to preserve the moral standards of the nation. Those standards are inevitably threatened by the medium of television which, after all, it the greatest influence in our lives. What are we getting from it? Increasingly we are getting material in the form of violence and pornography which is depraving and corrupting and is really upsetting to the young. When we look around our society we already see far too much that distresses and worries us; and there is a connection. I do not intend to develop it tonight, but next week I shall say about it a few more words to which I hope my noble friend and other noble Lords will listen. But I just roundly make the point to my noble friend that there really is here a major conflict of interest.
The noble Lord, Lord Annan, developed lucidly and vividly a brilliant analysis of the technological advantages, as did other noble Lords, too. Those advantages form a prize that we all want to win, but we could pay too high a price for it in the loss of moral standards and the loss of the splendid services that we already have, which undoubtedly would be threatened. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Hill is right there—that in the end the development would be bound to affect both the IBA and the BBC.
Therefore there is here much to be thought about very hard. We should not go into it until these matters have really been thought out, until we have found the right balance between the technological advantages

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that can be won and the need to maintain the moral safeguards of the nation. That is the issue, and we have not yet worked it out. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was not asked to do so, and he has not done so. He has given us a way in which to go ahead, in accordance with the terms of reference that he was given. But I ask my noble friend to tell us tonight what safeguards he is considering in the Home Office—safeguards which will preserve these two major assets in our national life. If he can answer that question satisfactorily, then I am sure that all noble Lords will be prepared to say, "Go ahead"; but if he cannot, I think we should all say to him, "You must wait until you have resolved this major conflict".
5.54 p.m.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing not only on enabling us to have this very important debate but on using his own considerable technological experience in introducing it in such a lucid manner. I also wish to pay tribute to the three excellent maiden speakers. In some ways we are this afternoon and this evening rather delving into the unknown, as indeed I suppose we were in the days of Marconi, when broadcasting first started, and in the days when television first began in this country. As has been made clear, anxieties were then expressed as to what television would bring to the nation, what people would see, let alone hear.
Now we have something which is admittedly very far-reaching, and for people such as myself, with a non-technical brain, it is very difficult to understand its technical and scientific ramifications. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is to be congratulated on producing an eminently readable report, a brief report. Some noble Lords say that it is too brief, that it was produced too quickly. Well, that is an arguable point. Obviously it is a report that needs very careful study, and arguably it is a report from which there have been omissions. It is questionable whether there should have been those omissions; and perhaps there should have been more safeguards. But there can be built into a society or an organisation too many safeguards, and the great test here is, if the safeguards are brought in, will it be possible to apply them?
Looking at the present television channels, I think it fair to say that, generally speaking, television in this country is of a high standard. The recently launched Channel 4 has not so far done very well on the public ratings, but it is a new infant. Certainly, such programmes as I have seen on Channel 4—which are not very many—could, in the terms of the old school report, have applied to them the phrase, "Could do better"; and no doubt in time they will. But, my Lords, just look at the matter from the viewpoint of the consumer. Cable television has, I believe, a great opportunity, if it can take it, to offset some of the shortcomings of the existing television channels. I know that there are those who say that that cannot be done, that there are problems regarding advertising, problems of not enough safeguards against indecency, pornography, and so on. But we have not yet had in this country the experience of cable television so as to know the answer to the question; and while I would be hesitant to have a whole host of cable television networks thrust upon this country, or any other
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country, all at once, I believe that we should perhaps start with a limited number of franchises.
In my view there is no reason why that should not begin fairly soon. It is always easy to put off something that is tentative and that has its problems. We all do it in our daily lives. It is a little like going to the doctor. If one can avoid going to the doctor, fair enough. That might not be a perfect analogy, but if we are to say that kind of thing in regard to cable television, notwithstanding the fact that the Hunt Report might have its deficiencies, we shall be saddled with what at the moment is something of a monopoly. I say that because, really, at the moment television in this country, good as it is, is largely a monopoly. I believe that with cable television there is the opportunity to branch out into so many more walks of life. I am glad to see, in paragraph 76 of the Hunt Report, that political impartiality will be maintained. This, I think, is important.
As regards the content of the programmes, particularly those which might be of doubtful moral value, I think the important question—and, of course, this is not dealt with in the Hunt Report so far as I can establish—is what is to be the position when these channels are operating. It is certainly to be hoped that the same exigencies which rightly exist in the case of the BBC and independent television so far as concerns not broadcasting what I might call adult plays without a warning that they might offend sensitive tastes because they are medical programmes or because they contain profane language, will apply to cable television. I have every confidence that they will, because if they do not then presumably—and I hope my noble friend the Minister will give your Lordships an answer to this question—they will be subject to the law on libel, the law on slander and the laws as they apply to indecency, particularly some of the recent legislation.
I do not think it is always right to compare cable television with American programmes. I have been to America only twice and I have seen only a very few American television programmes. The last I saw was in San Francisco, and was of a church service in San Diego with a parson who was really going hell for leather at his congregation, saying that they were all evil and that the Day of Judgment was at hand. It was fascinating to watch, but I hope that we are not going to get that in this country—and I am quite sure that we are not. I believe that cable television will and ought to have a lot to offer, not only by way of what one might call the popular programmes, which presumably include comedies and "popular music", as it is called, but also by way of cultural programmes. I believe there is a great opportunity here for some of our finest orchestras and some of our finest playwrights. They admittedly appear on BBC 1, BBC 2 and independent television, but there must be room in this sphere as well.
My Lords, I end by saying this. Certainly the contents of the Hunt Report deserve very much closer study; and certainly we do not want to rush into a surfeit of cable television. I believe that the BBC and the Independent Television Authority will be able to keep their own schedules without any real problem. It is going to be a long time before cable television reaches the greater part of the country, and this may be

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one of the problems of the present time, because, paradoxically, probably many of the people who would wish to see cable television are those living in the outlying areas where at the present time it is not always possible to get programmes like BBC 2, and certainly Channel 4, so easily.
So, my Lords, I think we ought to give at least a guarded welcome to cable television. It is too easy to be ultra-pessimistic. Whatever shortcomings there are in this report, and whatever vigilance the Government and other bodies have to extend, I believe this should be welcomed as a major technological breakthrough.
6.7 p.m.
Lord Torphichen: My Lords, other noble Lords have most expertly described how cable television may be organised and should be controlled. I cannot follow that; and I should like briefly to describe one or two ways in which it may be specified. I presume the Home Office will in due course produce a set of ground rules, and inevitably the interested parties will attempt to ensure that their requirements and interests are catered for.
My first comment is that the network providers, the cable operators, will attempt to control the apparatus that the customer uses or attaches to the home end of it. I hope that the regulations will reflect customer choice rather than the operator's convenience. My second comment is the same request but made in relation to the other end of the cable, at the provider's base station. Other noble Lords have described the possible range of services which might be connected to a broad-band cable. The obvious ones such as British Telecom's network, Telex and the X25 network, may not have immediate application, but, if every possible interconnection and application has to get over the various hurdles of approval before it can even have a trial run, I feel that only the most obvious or possibly the most trivial applications will succeed in surmounting all the hurdles and be available to the public. To clear the way, I feel that the Government should ensure that the necessary permissions for such interconnections are available from the start, maybe in outline form, in order that they may be taken up as they are required, and implemented.
My third comment is as to the choice of the system itself. Lord Annan very rightly pointed out the advantages of a star network, at possibly slightly greater cost, over a tree and branch network. He then spoiled it by suggesting that British Telecom should supply the network. I think it would be fair to say that British Telecom, if it has not had quite a hundred years to supply a broad-band cable network, could, at any time in the last 30 or 40 years, if it had chosen to do so, have supplied such a network, and it has not. If British Telecom wish to tender for parts of the cable network, they are very well placed to do so and they should have no difficulty. But I do not think that they require any special help or extension of their own monopoly.
Finally, I seem to have heard some confusion between the merits or possibilities of coaxial cable and glass-fibre transmission. There really is no competition between the two. There is no need for either one to be specified in the regulations as laid down by the Home Office or whoever it may be. They
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are rather more like interchangeable components of whatever system is defined, either as interchangeable components of the same part of the system where one may have a slightly greater performance than the other, or as different components doing different jobs in different parts of the system. There is no need to specify that any network built in this country should be glass-fibre from the start or for that matter should use any other particular method of transmission. I think that the opportunities are there and the Government intend to make them available. I trust that they will not be curtailed at the edges by the small print.
6.11 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, first I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, for introducing this debate and for doing so in terms of such moderation and persuasion. Then I must congratulate the three maiden speakers who were extremely interesting in the content of what they had to say but were also very clear and extremely brief. All these are virtues but may I whisper to them that when they address us again, which we hope they will and often, they could be just a bit longer—not very much, just a bit longer—and we should hear them with pleasure.
A lot of people have made the point that when independent television or commercial television—and I should like to call it commercial television without any feelings of opprobrium—was first introduced, many were apprehensive. I was one of the fearful. My fears were disproved for a number of reasons. First, it soon became extremely prosperous. The late Lord Thomson of Fleet described it at the time as a licence to print money. But then the BBC, of course, had great influence. The BBC had given us a model of what public service broadcasting should be and what excellence in broadcasting should be; and it had given aspirations to ITV producers. When you add the very wise, firm and gentle guidance of the authority, you find all this has created a very fine system of which we are all proud. And I may say that I am particularly delighted with its latest enrichment which is Channel Four. I think that Mr. Isaacs is achieving the impossible in making something of a fresh approach to television.
I believe that we should welcome the arrival of cable television, although our welcome must be a cautious one. Everyone has been cautious; I do not think that anybody has given the Hunt Report totally uninhibited support. As the Hunt Committee have said, cable television could give us an increased and enriched source of home entertainment. They do not spell out exactly what that enrichment should be—and I should like to know. One of the things it is suggested that we might have is news around the clock imported from the United States. Ted Turner's "Cable News Network" goes on for 24 hours a day and I am assured by no less an authority than Mr. Alistair Cooke that it is compulsive viewing for him and would be for me. But whether the general public will share our déformation profesionelle I very much doubt, because in a newspaper foreign affairs has the lowest readership rating.
The Hunt Committee say that the advent of cable television might alternatively lower the standards of our programmes. The question is how we ensure the

839
enrichment and how avoid the impoverishment. All of us who have read the report of the Hunt Committee will be aware that the problem is complex, that the crucial decisions should not be made until there has been a pretty long national debate. The noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, suggested that there was a case for haste but he did not make it out. A lot of people have said that the Government should hurry but they did not say why.
The report itself has most of the intellectual virtues. It is clearly written, concise and logical, and comes to firm conclusions. Just in one or two parts it is self-contradictory. For all that, the report is somewhat naive. The committee were exploring what was for them a new world. The committee consisted of a high civil servant, a top industrial chemist and an academic physicist. They had only six months to study and report, six months in which to examine 189 written submissions and also to visit the United States and Canada. They say that they had enough time. But this, I think, illustrates their shortcomings; they simply did not have time to grow the antennae which would register the pecuniary ambitions of "showbiz" and the wayward tastes of viewers.
They seem to have accepted the optimistic estimate of the advertising world about the growth of advertising and point to the fact that advertising grew fastest in the last years of the 1950s when commercial television was taking root. But there were reasons for that other than the advent of commercial television, reasons which the committee do not explore. One of them was that real, personal, disposable income, which had risen by about 6 per cent. in the first five years of the 1950s, rose by 9 per cent. in the next five years. Those were the years in which Mr. Macmillan assured us that we had "never had it so good". I do not think that the advent of cable television will increase the amout of advertising.
If cable television is to be supported by advertising as well as by subscriptions it will both diminish the audience for commercial television, causing it to lower its advertising rates and have to live on a smaller share of the total advertising expenditure. The noble Lord, Lord Hill, has made very clear what the effect will be on the quality of the programmes. Certainly the newspaper industry—and here I must plead a faint and diminishing interest—are showing a lively awareness of the danger that they would run of losing advertising and are demanding, and I think rightly demanding, the right to participate in cable.
The strongest demand of all comes from the local and regional papers where cable television will have a local base and will take some local advertising away from them and perhaps take some readers also. Indeed, provincial newspapers, like some potential entrepreneurs, are demanding that cable television should be as free as are the newspapers themselves from regulation and supervision. One can see the reason for that. The provision of cable is going to be a costly business and more people would like to have the facility than are willing to pay for it. The profits of the pioneers may be slow in coming, and may not come at all to some, unless they put out mostly those programmes which will maximise their audience and which have been bought in the cheapest market, which
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is, of course, the United States.
That is one of the ways that could impoverish our national television without enriching our home entertainment. Cable television would be carrying largely the kind of items which attract most viewers in off-the-air television and in time it would not only be commercial television that was endangered. The BBC would have difficulty in retaining general consent for its licence fee.
The analogy of cable television with the press is, however, one of most limited validity. Even if it was complete, I do not think that it would impress your Lordships. For long they have been unhappy about the press and many have pursed their lips, as the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, did tonight, at the current standards of the highly regulated BBC and ITV. Some 16 years ago, before I came to this House, I served on a committee under the noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross, which recommended a relaxation of the laws of libel and official secrets. When our report was debated here The Times reporter, sitting up there in the Press Gallery, wrote that from the Benches below came,
"a wave of criticism, a barrage of contempt, a fusillade of unconcealed dislike".
This was the way in which your Lordships regarded the press 16 years ago, and I am not sure—alas!—that the opinions are very much different today.
Today, few journalists—though they would die in the last ditch to defend the freedom of the press—are wholly happy about the newspaper concentrations or the kind of journalism made necessary to ensure survival. The law seems to be that cut-throat competition for a mass audience leads to a lower content of serious items and a higher one of sensational items. That could happen in television too unless there is adequate across-the-board regulation.
There is another reason to reject the analogy with the press. Throughout the length and breadth of Britain there is only one group, the Mirror Group, which has consistently supported the party that sits on these Benches. There may be an odd local paper which is pro-Labour, although I do not know of one. But, by and large, the provincial press is traditionally centre or centre right for good historical reasons. Often because it enjoys a monopoly, it takes care to be fair to the Opposition parties. The days when a Liberal paper and a Tory paper could battle flat out in a contest of ideas in a locality are gone forever. We are in the days of the single newspaper town. If cable television had the freedom of the press, the freedom to advocate political causes, that pattern would be repeated, and it is one which is surely socially undesirable.
The noble Lord, Lord Hill, suggested that it is only in the provision of news that the cable companies are required by the report to be balanced. However, I call his attention to Chapter 4, paragraph 25:
"We believe that the ownership of cable operating companies providing monopoly services into the home should be free from any kind of political or ideological bias. We would exclude both central and local government, and also any political party or organisation, from direct participation in the ownership of the companies operating cable systems. We think the same rule should apply to religious bodies".
The commitment to balance the programmes politically which has been imposed on the BBC and ITV has done a great deal to redress the imbalance of the press,

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and it has been all the more important since television became so highly politicised. The commitee propose that a balance should be kept by the cable operators. But this is a most difficult art, as we all know. Nobody knows it better than the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and other noble Lords who have been directors-general of the BBC or of Independent Television. The cable operators surely will require the guidance and the protection of a nationally respected authority if they are to escape perpetual political complaint.
This is the weakness of the report. This is where the committee showed its lack of awareness of the realities. It was carried away by its desire to make cable television compulsively attractive to entrepreneurs. So it proposed the absence of restraints which the noble Lord, Lord Hill, described in detail. I should be happy if the IBA, with their vast experience and fine track record, were to become the supervisory authority. Perhaps it may be possible for some kind of compromise to be adopted whereby it takes the new cable under its wing for a period and then hives it off as a separate authority. The commitee do not, however, think that it would be the best solution to have the IBA in. There would be at least a conflict of interest which could be real if cable made serious inroads into advertising revenue. This is the point at which they lose their conviction about the maintenance of the increase in advertising revenue. They say:
"There would be suspicion that the IBA might have an over-protective attitude to public service broadcasting and this could deter potential investors in cable."
Exactly! It is the potential investors in cable for whom these provisions are made.
The committee want a new authority which would not—I repeat "not"—approve programme schedules, would not "pre-vet" advertisements or even constantly scrutinise output—that is, unless a company persistently offended against the undertakings it gave when it was awarded the franchise. Then it could be threatened with closer supervision. I do not think that this is nearly good enough. I do not think you can have two systems side by side, one subject to restraint and the other virtually free. I do not say that cable television has to have anything like the restraints that the national television companies have, but it certainly requires a good deal more supervision than is proposed. To leave it to be as free as this report suggests is a way to reduce standards of excellence and standards of taste.
The Government should think of the long-term interests of the viewer. They should think particularly of the protection of the standards, of the excellence, of the two existing off-the-air services. I also wish to repeat what my noble friend said and what was said by one or two other noble Lords, that it would be a very good idea if we had a national cable system and one presumably which would be financed by the Government. After all, they can always privatise it in 20 years' time when it has proved to be successful.
6.28 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton): My Lords, this is the first opportunity which this House has had to consider the relationship between new technology and broadcasting policy since the Government invited the
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noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Tanworth, to undertake his inquiry. I am sure that the House would wish to join me, on behalf of the Government, in expressing congratulations and thanks to the noble Lord, and his colleagues, Sir Maurice Hodgson and Professor Ring, for carrying out their task so thoroughly and so expeditiously, whatever the riders your Lordships have attached individually to that message.
I am also indebted to my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing for the way in which he introduced this interesting debate. When he tabled it I think that we all thought he was planting a nasturtium seed. What eventually sprang up was a cross between a sunflower and a beanstalk which burst through the greenhouse roof. That is a measure of the interest and the importance which your Lordships attach to the subject. May I also take this opportunity of congratulating the maiden speakers, the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Wakefield, and my noble friends, Lord Pender and Lord Glanusk, on a most commendable and propitious embarkation upon your Lordships' House. I shall return to them later in terms which will be no less complimentary. Indeed it is agreeable to do so with all honesty and not simply because I am called to do so by the conventions of the House.
Your Lordships are already aware that I am not in a position to announce today the Government's conclusions on the recommendations of Lord Hunt's inquiry. We are in the process of considering the whole of our future policy towards cable. This embraces both the broadcasting aspects which the inquiry examined and also the important questions of technology and telecommunications policy which have been the subject of separate and detailed study within the relevant Government departments. We intend to announce the broad lines of our policy by Christmas and I am most grateful to all those noble Lords who have expressed their views in this debate on the way in which they would like to see our thinking develop.
It is a fact that over the past few months many people have become aware of cable and its potential for the first time. This has resulted from the publication in March of the report of the Prime Minister's Information Technology Advisory Panel and the setting up of the Hunt Committee, of which the admirably forthright and concise report is the subject of today's discussion. There has been a lot of media interest. Those who were willing to sit up late last Tuesday were able to see a very thorough and informative two-hour television programme prepared by Granada on the whole question of cable and every week articles appear in the Press about the technology, the programmes or the cost of cable.
But cable is not, of course, entirely new. There are nearly 120 million households in Western Europe. It has been estimated that nearly a quarter of them already receive their television services by means other than individual aerials. The great majority of them are connected to simple communal aerials, often installed on blocks of flats and run entirely on a noncommercial basis. About 7 per cent. of homes in Western Europe are linked to more substantial cable television systems. In this country, by contrast, only about 6 per cent. of households get their television signals from community aerial systems. Just over 7 per cent. are connected to the larger commercial systems.

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In this country, as elsewhere in Europe, cable has up to now been allowed to develop almost exclusively as an additional means of getting broadcast signals to the home. When television first became popular in the 1950s and again when the 625-line colour services were introduced in the 1960s, companies such as Rediffusion were able to find a market for relay networks in areas where reception was poor or nonexistent. By installing larger aerial systems they were able to bring in signals from distant transmitters beyond the reach of individual receiving equipment. The signals could then be distributed by wire to those prepared to pay for the facility.
Up to 1974 the number of subscribers to commercial relay systems in this country got bigger every year. But then the tide turned. Since 1974 there has been a steady annual erosion of the market. Today there are just over 1·4 million commercial relay customers. That is some 15 per cent. fewer than eight years ago. The proportion of households served by individual aerials has, however, remained fairly constant, at about 86 per cent. This is because, simultaneously with the decline in the number served by the commercial relay systems, there has been an increase in the number of small, non-commercial, communal aerial systems run by district councils and housing associations.
The reason for the decline in commercial relay systems is that the need which they originally met no longer exists. Encouraged by successive governments, the BBC and the IBA have now brought good off-air reception to about 99 per cent. of the population. They have been right to do so because one of the most important features of public service broadcasting is universal availability. Cable companies can no longer sell along the wire what nearly everybody can get free out of the air.
The Government accepted from the start that there could be a role for cable of fundamental importance, none the less. It was for that reason that we decided two years ago to authorise a number of pilot schemes of subscription television. This has enabled companies in 13 different areas to use one channel on their systems to provide an additional premium service for which customers have to pay a monthly subscription. It is too early yet to draw any firm conclusions. It is only a year since the first of the channels came into operation. What seems already to be clear, however, is that at the right price there is a market for more entertainment services. This is particularly the case for feature films, which account for almost the whole of the channels' output. The latest figures submitted to the Home Office show that in the 12 areas offering the new service at the end of July, of the 300,000 homes passed by the cable systems about 100,000 were connected to them. Of those 100,000, about 18,000 were taking the pay channel.
Price clearly plays an important part in determining the level of take-up of the service. Some companies have in fact reduced their monthly charge in order to try to increase the number of subscribers. The most expensive of the areas has come down from £ 12 to £ 10 and the cheapest from £8 to £6·50. What has now become clear, however, is that the future of cable has to be seen in a much broader perspective. The
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challenge is not simply to see whether there is some way of reviving the existing relay operations and of offering a limited number of additional entertainment channels. In the long run, cable is unlikely to be restricted to leisure or entertainment. It looks much more like developing as an information latticework for a whole variety of functions, a great many of which have not yet been perfected and a few of which may not even be invented for some years to come.
The immediate prospect is that of a new wideband cable technology which could multiply the number of channels on conventional systems many times over. At the same time it will open the door, as my noble friend Lord Pender reminded us in his very constructive speech, to a range of interactive and information services. The ancestry of my noble friend Lord Pender made his contribution of particular interest. My noble friend Lord Glenusk, in another very interesting maiden speech on the technological implications, referred to the possibility of using sewers as the means of bringing programmes into the home. This is a technical matter and I am not qualified to comment upon its mechanical suitability. However, it is very important that we should make absolutely certain that their aesthetic suitability is zero. Regarding the other technical issues, I can best refer my noble friend's valuable comments and those of the noble Lord, Lord Annan, and others to the experts who advise us so that I can view them in a properly intelligent context.
We have been accustomed in the past to think of leisure as a kind of spin-off from work. By an agreeable irony it now appears that, for once, work may prove to be a spin-off from leisure. The filigree paths beaten out today by those such as Mr. Humphries in "Are you Being Served?", of Messrs. Corbett and Barker in "The Two Ronnies" and even, I suggest, by my right honourable and imaginary friend Mr. Hacker in "Yes Minister" may well provide the trunk lines down which, the day after tomorrow, switched packages or coded messages will carry a heavy traffic of commercial and industrial business. We are talking about what is, at least potentially, a technological revolution which could bring enormous economic and industrial benefit and which could have a profound social and cultural impact on our country. This was a matter which gave a number of your Lordships grave concern. This prospect, highlighted by the ITAP Report, has obvious and major implications for broadcasting. We have to assess these implications and the opportunities which they can represent. That is why we asked the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his colleagues to examine how we might secure the benefits of cable technology by means consistent with the wider public interest and, in particular, with safeguarding public service broadcasting.
A number of the ways in which the expansion of cable could affect public service broadcasting have been identified this afternoon and this evening. The multiplication of channels tends inevitably to fragment the audience. This trend began with ITV in the 1950s. It has recently taken a step further with the inauguration of Channel 4. Fragmentation of an audience can mean splitting existing finance for programme production into a large number of smaller slices. But this is not necessarily an inescapable result. The hope must be that it will generate additional

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resources which will reinforce the programme production industry which is one of this country's strengths.
We are ready enough to consider the position of those who will benefit from additional cable services, but we have an obligation also to consider the position of those who will not: those, for example, who live in areas which will not be economically attractive to cable or who are unable or unwilling to meet the additional costs of it where it is available. A new system of cable services which resulted in a diminished range or quality of off-air services provided by the BBC and ITV would not be acceptable. This point was one of the first made by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, and it bears inevitably on such issues as the "must carry" services and the establishment of pay-per-view.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield cited the risk that the quality end of the range of programmes produced by existing producers might be starved if the popular end was to become more expensive to make. These and other aspects of the impact of cable on public service broadcasting have been carefully weighed by the Hunt inquiry. They concluded that cable and the public service broadcasting could exist side by side provided there were certain safeguards. Some regulation would be necessary, both for the sake of the services on which large sections of the community will for many years yet continue to remain dependent, and also because of the particular nature of cable as a medium in its own right.
My noble friend rightly reminded us that we shall need to consider the proportion of foreign material admitted to this country. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, suggested that it could be any amount beyond a mandatory minimum of home products. That brought us to the cultural impact of cable and the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, rightly reminded us that it is necessary to human life, if it is to retain its humanity, that some of our encounters with other people at least should be conducted "live". He would expect, as would the right reverend Prelate, and many others would insist, that the material available should in any case be wholesome. A number of noble Lords have referred to the possibility that cable might encourage the spread of pornography. Since the Hunt Report was published a lot of attention has been focussed on the recommendation that "X" films be allowed without restriction on electronically-lockable channels. Some of your Lordships fear that whether the key is electronic or mechanical, small and hopefully innocent eyes will too often find ways of watching through the keyhole. I share the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, as to whether existing legislation would in fact suffice to control what those young eyes then saw, and this is a question to which the Government will be giving their attention.
Rumbling like thunder behind that consideration will be the trenchant comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, and my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford on any weakening of protection of standards of published material or of the defence of national standards of quality and propriety. What I believe may have received rather less recognition is the
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general conclusion that this was not an area that could be simply left to the law of the land. Because of the place of television in the home and legitimate concern about the impact of pornography and violence, the inquiry doubted whether—and I quote,
"the mass of public opinion here would find acceptable some of the programmes receivable without restriction on cable channels in the United States".
As a result they recommended that, except on lockable channels, cable operators should be subject to the same taste and decency obligations as are the existing broadcasting authorities. In particular they would need to take account of the impact of programmes shown at times when large numbers of children were likely to be watching; and children stay up late these days. The cable authority would have power to take action against operators who disregarded their franchise obligations.
My noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing was anxious that the teeth of the authority should not be too draconian and certainly, if my noble friend Lord Bessborough has his way with a 15-year franchise, there will be a pretty rare opportunity to exercise refusal to renew. The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, would impose great responsibility on this authority, as would the noble Lord, Lord Beswick. I am grateful to those noble Lords who have spoken on this aspect of the subject today and have noted the reservations which have been expressed. The Government will certainly take account of the points which have been made and I can assure the House that we take that issue very seriously indeed.
Whenever science and technology throw up some new development we have to ask ourselves where it will lead us before we avail ourselves of it. But a thorough and responsible examination of the issues must be a preparation for action and not a substitute for action. Already with satellite broadcasting we have moved ahead in a way that will give both our manufacturing industry and our broadcasters the opportunity to be in our proper place among the world leaders. Yesterday my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Industry together published the report of the advisory panel on transmission standards to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, referred. The panel was chaired by Sir Antony Part, and it recommended that a new picture and sound system should be adopted for the first two BBC channels in 1986. We shall be announcing our conclusions on that report very shortly.
If we want to make the most of new technology we have to be prepared to move both quickly and cautiously. In the United States, cable has spread rapidly since many of the restrictions on it were lifted in the mid-1970s. France and Germany have both announced recently a cable development programme. Both countries are at an early stage in their thinking on what sort of services their systems will eventually deliver. Without knowing that, any estimate of the size of the receiving market must be fairly speculative and I cannot help thinking that by addressing ourselves and asking the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his colleagues to address themselves to this question we may have put ourselves a little ahead of the French and Germans and not so far behind them as my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing suggests.

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The dependence of expansion on consumer uptake also puts a question mark over any estimate of job creation. America, with four times our population, and with a very different culture, is no certain guide. But the issue is very important and my noble friend was right to direct our attention to where it is already concentrated. There can be little doubt that many sectors of industry stand to gain considerably. Among these are cable manufacturers, the consumer electronics sector (we are now a net exporter of colour television sets and that is a turnround), the electronics components sector and telecommunications equipment suppliers. The United Kingdom is strongest in all these sectors as it is in programme production, which the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, was careful to mention.
A number of countries also have plans to introduce direct broadcasting satellite services in the middle of this decade. How rapidly the pattern and extent of our existing broadcasting system will be significantly altered by new services it is difficult to say because, as my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing has pointed out, that programme depends on finance and it will be the consumer who decides. The pilot schemes of subscription television tell us the same as the study published recently by Communications and Information Technology Research Limited; namely, that there is a market for additional entertainment but that people do insist on value for money. The high quality and wide range of programmes which consumers can at present obtain at relatively modest cost have set the standards by which new services will be judged.
The Government cannot guarantee that cable, DBS or indeed any other new services will be a success. Our responsibility is to create the right framework within which the market can do its work. Our task is made the more difficult by the dramatic pace at which each technological advance is overtaken by the next. The only thing of which we can be sure, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, says in his report, is that we cannot accurately foresee the future. Our response therefore needs to be both positive and flexible.
There are many other issues into which I would have liked to follow your Lordships. Notably, the need to prescribe the type of cable or not, the issue of the common verses the multiple carrier, the question of who is to supply the cable, and the interactive and information systems are all matters which could occupy your Lordships for many hours. I would have liked also to go into the question of the involvement of local bodies. The right reverend Prelate thought that it would be increased—especially, under his guidance no doubt, with the churches. The noble Lord, Lord Oram, thought that on the whole local interests would suffer; and the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, said that the papers at least had an interest in increasing it. But I must deny myself that pleasure because your Lordships will be impatient—and I want to pay a tribute of gratitude to the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, for his immense patience in allowing us to speak at such length.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his colleagues have shown us how they believe we could go forward. Throughout this debate he has restrained himself commendably, but your Lordships have not. Your Lordships have today offered your views on those
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recommendations very fully. It is now for the Government to reach their conclusions in the light of all the comment available to them. This debate will form a valuable part of that resource, and I am most grateful both to your Lordships and to my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing for ensuring that it took place.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to every noble Lord who has spoken and particularly to the maiden speakers, and for the patience of the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale. I think one noble Lord I should have liked to hear, but it is customary not to, is the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, himself. I think that, had he spoken, he might have said that there had been criticism in most parts of the House because people seemed to think that cable was going to imitate and compete against the BBC and ITV. That is not so. The whole point of cable television is that it should be totally different; it should cater for minority tastes, local groups, a totally different approach from that of the BBC or ITV.
The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, asked why I felt there was any urgency. I felt there was urgency because our competitor countries are walking past us in this direction, and I felt there was urgency because I think that anything which provides 20,000 extra jobs, mainly for young people, is highly desirable in this country today.
I should like particularly to thank my noble friend Lord Elton for the very thorough way in which he replied to the debate. He referred to almost every speech, and that is exactly the way we like it to be done in this House. Thank you very much, my Lords. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Youth in Manufacturing Industry
6.52 p.m.
Viscount Rochdale Viscount Rochdale rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the constraints that continue to deter too many of our ablest young people from considering and preparing themselves for a career in manufacturing industry, and what action they intend to take.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, in asking the Question, may I just refer to the expressions of thanks for my alleged patience? In point of fact I have listened to some of the speeches in the last debate, which I have done with great interest as an ex-governor of the BBC along with the noble Baroness at present sitting on the Woolsack. I beg, therefore, to ask the Question which stands in my name.
Briefly, my Question is this: how can we best persuade young people who will shortly be leaving schools, universities and colleges, and who will be thinking about their future career, that manufacturing industry should be regarded as a prestige career? That is the question. Manufacturing industry can offer an exciting challenge, capable of stretching the most brilliant brains, and at the same time—bearing in mind that, after all, even today, manufacturing industry is our major creator of national wealth, and in that respect can be regarded as the paymaster of the welfare state—it can appeal to the social conscience of

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youth, which is very much in evidence today, and provide the opportunity for them to give service as socially honourable and indeed as essential as any other form of career.
During the last day's debate on the Queen's Speech on 10th November, discussion was of course concentrated to a large extent on commerce and industry, on our competitiveness and all the problems relating to that. I should be the last to wish to repeat this evening those arguments and counter-arguments. There certainly were some very notable speeches, which I listened to with the greatest interest. But there is one topic which came up which I do want to say a general word about; it is very relevant to my question. That is youth employment.
Of course, the need to expand employment opportunities for youth in general, which is so much discussed in so many different quarters today, is of paramount importance. No one can possibly dispute that. But, if the oportunities that can be provided are to be made reasonably permanent and offer reasonable hope of continuing security for work at all levels of ability, including the less able, then it is more than ever essential to attract and hold a significant portion of the most able—my Question includes the word "ablest"—right up the ladder of management in manufacturing industry. So it is on our ablest young people that I want to put the emphasis in my Question.
Today, more than ever in this age of developing technology, changing patterns of demand, increasing competition and, often, world over-capacity, a higher proportion of our most brilliant young people are a necessity, in my view, to manufacturing industry. They are a necessity to provide the inspiration, to give the ingenuity and leadership in all fields, whether they be the technological, the administrative or the human field. Of course we have already in manufacturing industry a number of brilliant men and women. But probably right from the very start of the Industrial Revolution, unless there has been some particular family or local tradition of industry, or some special urge to go into industry, it has never succeeded in being the major attraction for the cream of our young people. I believe that to be an historical fact for which there is ample evidence. Too often instead of encouragement to enter industry there has been active discouragement, as I shall try to develop.
If we are going to improve this situation, if we are going to establish a career in industry as a prestige career, then I think the corollary is that we have to create a concept of an industrial and technological élite. I know that in certain quarters and in some contexts this word "élite" is regarded with some distaste, as favouring perhaps the few at the unfair expense of the many. But, in the interests of all, we need the most capable and very best qualified to manage the affairs of our manufacturing industry. We have only to look abroad, around the world, to see that other major industrial countries of the free world, notably West Germany, France, the United States and, I believe, Japan, do just that; they regard a manufacturing career as an élite career.
We must not—and I see this as a serious temptation—allow the current high level of unemployment to confuse this issue and so diminish the importance of the need I am trying to put forward.
Indeed, I believe the very reverse to be the case, and that evidence could be produced to show that some, at least, of our problems in manufacturing industry today can be put down to the failure in the past to give it the proper pre-eminence it has deserved—and, by "the past", I mean during the last century. I doubt if there ever has been a time when manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom has been given, whether socially or academically, the esteem and importance that it deserves.
It is worth for one moment considering where discouragement might come from, and there may be several sources. I have identified four which I will put to your Lordships. The first source is prevailing attitudes, both community and parental. The second is the world of education. The third, and this follows very well after the previous debate of my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing, is the media—television, radio and the press. The fourth, regrettably, is even at times industry itself, including the trade unions. However, I am glad to say that in the fourth category there appears to me, as I shall mention later, an awakening to the necessity of doing something, and doing it urgently.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, who I am delighted to see is to take part in this debate, had a debate nearly 12 months ago on 2nd December 1981. Her subject was "Education, Training and Industrial Efficiency". Of course, that subject is extremely relevant to tonight's debate and it was a very important debate. Unfortunately, I was not able to take part in that debate but I have read, and in places re-read, what was said. I must say that I received considerable encouragement from all sides of your Lordship's House.
As I read the noble Baroness's debate, her objective and mine, though slightly different, were both equally important, largely complementary and, inevitably, showed some degree of overlap. I should briefly now like to put the two objectives together to give them their proper relationship. My objective is to ask how we can best stimulate the interests of our most promising young people—graduates and others—on manufacturing industry and present it to them as a really worthwhile challenge. The noble Baroness's objective, as I read it, is that, assuming that the will to grasp the challenge that I mention has been achieved, every possible opportunity must be established and available for the education and training needed to equip these people to meet it successfully, whether in outlook, understanding of what is involved, technical appreciation or skill.
Being no longer, after many years, actively engaged in industry today, though still associated with it in a variety of ways, particularly in the North-West, I am in no position to comment in any detail on what industry's particular requirements might be or on the specific education and training that a particular firm might require. Others far better equipped than I from current day experience can do that. But, reading the debate of the noble Baroness, Lady David, I was greatly encouraged by signs from all sides of the House that there is in many universities a shift in emphasis to science, technology, engineering and related subjects required by industry. That certainly has been my own assessment of the situation in the North-West. The trend seems to be in the right direction, but a great deal

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more needs to be done and the tempo certainly needs to be maintained.
This is not merely a one-sided operation with responsibility resting solely on the academic world, on the world of education and training, to equip itself to offer the necessary courses and facilities. Industry itself—employers and trade unions—must generally take the lead and say what they require and continually be strengthening their links with universities and polytechnics. I do not believe that the importance of the college-industry dialogue can be overstated. In "college-industry dialogue", I include not merely talk or paper based on current or past experience, important as that obviously is, but, where appropriate, some actual two-way exchange of practical effort by some system, however difficult, of individual secondment. I think that that should be a two-way operation.
Here again, I am encouraged by what I have seen and what I know is going on in the North-West. I have in mind such universities as Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester and Salford, and polytechnics in Liverpool, Manchester and Preston. I have no doubt that the same applies elsewhere. However, I have some doubts as to how typical this is of some of the older universities where the prestige, the mystique of their name, their traditions and reputation will perhaps tend to draw many of the most outstanding young people away into other disciplines and so away from the industrial contact. I only hope that I am wrong. In this context, I should like to mention an excellent piece of work that has been done, and is still going on, through the establishment of no less than 30—I think the number is growing—student industrial societies in the various universities. I believe that they are doing a very good piece of stimulating work.
That brings me to a few words on young people themselves. I do not for one moment suggest that these brilliant young graduates should be featherbedded on entering industry. Indeed, however convinced that this is the career they want—and, of course, conviction is essential—some may well, we must realise, have to modify their ideas of their own value in the early years and be prepared to roll up their sleeves and dirty their hands. That may come easy to some, depending on their background, but with others it may be more difficult and need very subtle encouragement.
On the other hand, it is surely equally important that nothing is done to damp down the enthusiasm of youth once it has been aroused. This may call for a very fine and difficult balance to be achieved. Discouragement can come all too easily, whether it comes from ambitious parents—and home influence can be very crucial—from industry itself, or from colleges. It is understandable that headmasters and tutors are naturally proud of the achievements of their most brilliant pupils and are most anxious that they should see those pupils going forward to some career of great prestige. Discouragement can also come from the media. Discouragement can come from all those sources.
As regards industry's attitude, this is a difficult point. I can imagine—in fact, I know of—situations that may well create difficulties for some industrial managements which will call for great wisdom,
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understanding and often humility on their own part, especially if these present managements have not always had the opportunities that are open to young people today. One knows only too well of cases of, "We don't need graduates in our firm. It isn't necessary". Probably that is just the place where they are needed.
I should like to say a few words about the media because their influence is most important. What type of reports on industry are we accustomed to hearing on the television or on radio? Do those reports concentrate on the brighter, the successful, the success stories or the interesting? Are they not rather inclined to dwell on the sinister, the dangerous, the health hazards, the disagreements and the picket lines? I am sure that your Lordships will know exactly the answer that I have to those questions.
How often in radio and television fiction is the portrayal of industry other than as rather sombre, if not deliberately crooked—something to be avoided if possible? Of course factual reporting must be honest and care must be taken as regards dealing with what might possibly be commercial secrets. But if we see only the more depressing facts getting the headlines because they constitute "news" and may be easier come by, certainly, by some young reporters who have no knowledge of industry and perhaps care less—even though there are many exciting and successful matters to report—this cannot fail to create an anti-industry climate that will influence graduates adversely and urge them to direct their talents elsewhere.
I do not want to conclude on a pessimistic note—indeed, the very reverse. I have been greatly encouraged during the last few weeks or perhaps the last month or two by how much thought is apparently being given in a number of quarters to this vexed problem. There was an article in the Financial Times of 15th September, entitled Social Attitudes to Industry, by a Mr. Lorenz. It was very interesting and referred to the "roots of the British malaise". Again, in The Times of, I think, 7th September, there was a quote from the presidential address by Sir Charles Carter, who was then president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and who made exactly the same point. There was a publication by the Schools Council earlier this year on Schools and Industry. As recently as 10th November there was reference in the Guardian to a memorandum by NEDO on Education and Industry—a most valuable and interesting report, which, I understand, is at present under discussion. On a rather more particular and narrower issue, but none the less relevant, in March this year there was a report published by the Policy Studies Institution on Micro-electronics in Industry, to which I shall refer in a moment.
There may be other papers, but they all seem to me to point strongly in the direction that I have been talking about: that is, to the need to encourage an élite to run British industry of the future, not merely a few outstanding firms—and we have a number of very outstanding firms—but industry as a whole, so that it can use wisely and to the full all the opportunities available but too often neglected in this country, technological, financial and in the human field, and so be able to stand up to any competition that presents itself.
I referred a moment ago to the report by the Policy Studies Institution on micro-electronics, which quotes a very striking example—I shall not give the figures—and refers to the enormous proportion of manufacturing industry in this country which either does not know, or does not use, micro-electronics in any form whether in its processing or in its products. It is an astonishingly high percentage and it is something that one must bear in mind.
What can one hope to achieve by asking this Unstarred Question? Obviously nothing dramatic; but the more that can be said and asked up and down the country on an authoritative basis and as often as possible, to create the climate of opinion on manufacturing industry that I have tried to express—and what more authoritative word could go out than from your Lordships' Chamber?—the more likely it is that the public concept of industry as the élite career for the most brilliant (and not just a second choice, as too often happens) will improve, not for the selfish benefit of the lucky brilliant few, but for the general advantage of all.
In asking what are Her Majesty's Government's views on this and what action, if any—I am sure that they have some action in mind—they are going to take, I should like also to thank other noble Lords who are supporting me in my Unstarred Question and say how much I look forward to the maiden speech which we shall shortly hear.
7.16 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I am sure that we are all extremely grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, for initiating this debate on what is really an extremely fascinating subject. I must apologise from these Benches because we had hoped that the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, the noble Lord, Lord Scanlon, or the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, would be able to be here tonight to speak from these Benches. Unfortunately they all had previous engagements which they could not postpone. Therefore, it has fallen to my lot to speak for my party on this subject. In fact, I am rather pleased about it because, as the noble Viscount pointed out, this debate does in a way complement the debate which I initiated just about a year ago. So for my part I am delighted to be involved.
In the debate which we had previously a good deal of emphasis was laid on improving the training of school-leavers. Tonight we are talking about our ablest young people. First, I should like to ask: is it true that they are not considering and preparing themselves for a career in manufacturing industry? I have asked a few of my industrial friends about this matter and they say that they are getting the right people. Do we have enough facts? I have discovered that in 1981, 66 per cent. of all men who graduated and entered home employment went into industry and commerce—"commerce", of course, includes accountancy, banking and other jobs and I have not been able to get the breakdown between that and industry. However, I have the figures as regards what happened to the 1,025 men who achieved first-class degrees that year. In fact, 117 went into public service; 54 into education; 223 into commerce; 31 into "miscellaneous" which apparently includes the law; and 600 into industry—59 per cent., which does not seem to me too bad.
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There were 350 women who achieved firsts: 89 went into public service; 31 into education; 119 into commerce; 19 into miscellaneous; and 92 into industry. In that instance it was 26 per cent. of the total of firsts, and that, of course, is not good enough. A very large number of those with second-class degrees went into industry and I understand that someone with a 2.1 would be counted as among the most able. Therefore I should have thought that the story was not really too bad. I have tried but failed to get the numbers of those graduates from polytechnics and colleges of higher education who went into industry and I wonder whether the Minister responding can give us a breakdown when he replies. I should point out that my figures are for 1981.
There has been a slight fall in demand for graduates over the last few years, but that is hardly surprising because of the recession and general redundancies. Industry apparently expect that there will be a decline, probably until 1984; then they expect to have a shortage of applied scientists and electronic engineers. The cutbacks in the technological universities of Salford, Aston, Keele, Stirling and UMIST will seem pretty foolish then. I have been re-reading our December 1981 debate. The Minister then gave no answer to the many questions that were posed to him about the reasons for the severest cuts being in those universities which were not only producing the sort of graduate industry wanted but which also had very good records of getting graduates into employment. We have a right to know, as the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said on that occasion, and I ask the Minister: may we please be told now? Also, if he has any figures, I should like to know how many science and engineering graduates are out of work now.
What are the probable reasons? The noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, gave four, assuming that the able are reluctant to go into manufacturing industry. I have managed to get up to 10. They are as follows. First, there is the image of industry as strife-ridden, of plant closures, of shift work, of demarcation disputes, of tensions leading to ulcers and coronaries, of a rat race—an image which conjures up both Dickens' Hard Times and Chaplin's "Modern Times". In fact, of course, most managements have perfectly good relationships with the unions, which you certainly would not guess from the media, who have much to answer for.
Secondly, there is the belief that industry may not offer to the intellectually most able the same mental challenge as, for example, academic research or Civil Service administrative work. Thirdly, there is the reluctance to face the elements of risk, of pressure, of insecurity, and so on. Fourthly, there is a misunderstanding that industry can only use scientists, engineers and technologists. In reality, of course, there are many vacancies open to graduates of any discipline. Fifthly, there is an unwillingness to look beyond the big, respectable blue chip firms—Unilever, ICI, Shell, Marks and Spencer, et cetera. The reality is that these firms are taking a smaller proportion of graduates, whereas many medium-sized and smaller companies need graduates and take more today.
Sixthly, there is idealism. The noble Viscount referred to the social conscience and to people who say, "I want to do something useful; I want to do voluntary service overseas", or, "I want to become a

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social worker". That may be so, but of course it is also useful to do something that creates wealth, jobs, exports; to build houses and generators, to sell Britain's goods abroad and so on, so that the money is provided for the health and the education services, et cetera. Seventhly, do some of the young think that making money is not a very respectable pursuit? Do they despise filthy lucre?
Eighthly, does the prospect of going to the North or the Midlands, where more industry is situated, seem less culturally attractive than life in the South and South-East?—with fewer theatres, concerts, operas and museums. Ninethly, do young people not like the idea of organising other people's lives? They are certainly often very disorganised themselves, and that goes for the able as well as the less able, in my experience. Finally, there is tradition—the family—snobism. In this country industry has been looked on as less glamourous, less smart than the professions, the Services and the Civil Service. A few industries are perhaps more acceptable than others. I was amused some years ago when a well-known member of the publishing industry wrote his auto-biography; it was called A Career for a Gentleman, sub-titled My Life as a Publisher. Could the public schools and the universities, particularly the ancient universities, have had any influence on this attitude? I would guess so and I notice that the noble Viscount also had his reservations about some of the universities. These are only some suggestions. Of them all, I think that the general attitude there has been to industry, of its being not quite so smart as the professions, has probably been the worst in preventing our ablest young people from venturing there. However, things may be changing.
How much is industry itself to blame for the image that it creates? Has there been a reluctance among established employees to accept high-fliers from outside—the noble Viscount mentioned this—so that when they go in the high-fliers perhaps feel uncomfortable, unwanted and then perhaps report unfavourably to their friends? However, I believe that industry is making a very conscious effort to improve that image. The Industrial Society gave a party here last week and spoke to many of us. They are clearly doing very good work, going into the schools and universities to explain what manufacturing industry is really like and what the opportunities are. One of the things they specialise in is the development of young employees and identifying training needs. They are helping to fill some of the gaps left by the disbandment of the lTBs.
What can the education service do? I think that the schools can help. They have a role to play in providing a general understanding of how the political, economic and industrial framework of society is organised and regulated. This aspect of education has not been provided in the curriculum of most schools. Many young people still leave school with little understanding of social structures and conditions, of basic economic and political concepts, with little idea of what working life is like. The school curricula has been structured according to traditional academic subjects and the content of courses is determined by the requirements of entry to higher education. I think that this criticism applies to all levels of ability.
In wanting to bring about change, the TUC
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approached the Schools Council with a proposal for a new curriculum project. The TUC and the CBI have been actively involved in this and the Schools Council Working Paper No. 73, published this year, is the result. It is called Schools and Industry. I cannot go into its many proposals here and now, and I do not think that your Lordships would thank me for doing so, but there are a good many and I hope that it will be useful.
A similar view as to the inadequacy and inappropriateness of the school curriculum has come from the Director-General of the National Economic Development Council in a recent paper on education and industry. Through the ages—and he goes back 100 years or more—he sees a failure of the educators to provide the right training both at and post school level for those who might or should have gone into industry. He compares us very unfavourably with other European countries, particularly with Germany. Repeated attempts have been made to make education in the United Kingdom more appropriate to people's working lives, but they have failed. He says that it remains a filtering system for identifying the academically most able.
He sees four obstacles to change. First, the examination system with its academic orientation; secondly, the inability of industry itself to articulate a clear statement of its needs; thirdly, teachers, even if aware of the needs, are constrained by their initial training, which is remote from industry, and by lack of in-service training; fourthly, the allocation of funds, being de-centralised, can be little influenced by industry. That means that those outside education find it difficult to influence a different distribution of resources. He says that all these obstacles need to be tackled simultaneously, and that is the biggest obstacle of all.
I shall be interested to hear what the Government have to say about this paper and whether they propose to pay heed to it. I am amused that much of what the Director-General is saying chimes in with much that the Labour Party is saying. He suggests, too, that the limiting of mandatory grants to anyone admitted to a degree course should be changed and that the extension of such educational claims could be used in one or more of a range of educational institutions, and at any point in an individual's working life. This entitlement to some further or higher education at any stage of a person's career is proposed in the Labour Party's post-18 discussion document, which is to be printed very shortly.
Industry knows that it has not done enough in the past to put forward an attractive image. It has done much more recently. It has funded Project Trident and Young Enterprise, where small businesses are set up within schools. The Young Engineer of the Year Award Scheme has been started. The CBI has set up the Understanding British Industry Programme. But the Director-General says that this type of work needs to be developed with the aim of defining more closely for both sides—industrial and educational—what industry needs. We want to know what the Government plan both on the educational and the industrial side.
Perhaps they will claim, as a major initiative, the new scheme that burst upon an astonished educational world on 12th November, when the Prime Minister

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announced, in answer to a planted Question by Sir William Van Straubenzee, that a pilot scheme, to start by September 1983, would be developed for new institutional arrangements for technical and vocational education for 14 to 18 year-olds within existing resources—MSC resources, presumably—and, where possible, in association with local education authorities.
Ten pilot projects, 10,000 pupils, initial cost £7 million rising possibly to £35 million to £40 million, are proposed. If the LEAs and the secondary schools do not play, new technical schools will be set up. A lot of questions remain to be asked. How well thought out is this scheme? Is it thought out? Is it a sudden bright idea of Mr. David Young? It could be a tremendous jolt to our educational system. What about 14 year-olds leaving school and working under further education regulations? Is new legislation going to be necessary? Will this stir the Government to bring in a Bill to deal with the legal basis of further education? Try as I may, I can get no answer to that now often repeated question. As the Times Educational Supplement leader on this new MSC plan said:
"It is ironical in the extreme that while the MSC is taking giant strides to reorientate a large chunk of English and Welsh secondary education, the only serious policy initiatives that Sir Keith Joseph is interested in are loans and vouchers, and these are no more than gleams in a manifesto writer's eye".
So, to sum up, what are the main constraints that may be preventing our ablest young from going into industry? The image of industry the media sets up, the long tradition of the respectability of a career in the professions and civil service compared with one in industry, the school and examination system, the division of our culture into two sections, the arts and the sciences—"the two cultures", as the late Lord Snow described them in a famous lecture in Cambridge many years ago—the lack of a third section (in Germany known as the Technik, which can be translated as the art of making things)—-could this lack in our system, this attachment to getting knowledge in preference to applying it, be one of the reasons for our industrial decline and the lack of appeal to the young and able? For if our attitude suggests to the young that it is more useful to know the why of things rather than to produce them, then the abler ones are less likely to be drawn to manufacturing in the course of their working lives. It is a great pity that the Education for Capability movement sponsored by many distinguished people—and many from this House, in fact—has not taken off. I am not quite sure why.
I believe that this Government's strong advocacy of the status quo where the school curriculum and the exam systems are concerned—I might really have said the status quo ante—and their determination to reduce the opportunities of higher education in both the university and the public sectors are going to have a bad and sad effect on industry, and on the likelihood of more of our ablest young taking up careers in that sphere. I should like to think that they might change their views and actions, but flexibility is certainly not this Government's middle name.
But perhaps the greatest constraint on young people going into manufacturing industry now and in the next few years will be the contraction of the manufacturing industries themselves. I said earlier that the information was that demand was on the decline. Good
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industries have gone to the wall; have gone bankrupt. If still in existence, they might have found work for many able young men and women. I would say to the noble Viscount who initiated the debate, and indeed to the noble Lord the Minister who is to reply, that the core of the problem in the future may well be the Government's economic policy.
7.34 p.m.
Lord Baker: My Lords, I must first thank the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, for bringing forward again this important subject, as he did in December 1978 in the third of a trilogy of debates in that year, of which I had the privilege of introducing the first on the need to encourage enterprise and innovation. The reports of the three debates in that year together make an impressive document which I have studied carefully, but hard as I tried I could not find anything in them really that contributed towards the present inquiry into what deters the best of our young people from entering with enthusiasm into the creative activity of engineering manufacture. I intend to concentrate on the problem of the recruitment of professional engineers, but this does not narrow the field as much as one would think because I am confident that the best managers in manufacturing industry, as in most other activities, are first trained as engineers.
This question, of course, has been in the forefront of my mind for well over 30 years. I confess that it is only by exercising the greatest restraint that I am sparing your Lordships the speech that I first made about 1948, and continued to make thereafter at regular intervals whenever in fact I could find a worthwhile audience. This continued down to 1976 when I took, as the subject of my presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, The Engineer and Survival. In concluding that address I said:
"We need to attract into engineering a far greater proportion of those with outstanding ability. If we fail in this now we will not survive as an effective people".
I was impelled to make the original speech in 1948 when I realised the damaging, false deductions that had been made after the Second World War that our success on the technical side was due to science, whereas there was virtually no original scientific work carried out during the war years. Our success on the technical side was due to superlative engineering—admittedly occasionally carried out by men and women who had been trained as scientists, but then they were acting as engineers.
This emphasis by influential people, who should have realised the consequences of their insistence on the pre-eminent and overwhelming importance of their own speciality, pure science, was a serious constraint on children choosing a career, because it played into the hands of schoolmasters, many of whom were dedicated scientists—dedicated with an almost religious fervour—while there was little balance from the other side since few schoolmasters have been engineers or have any first-hand knowledge of industry.
I had made some attempt to review the position as shown by reports, but the brilliant contribution by the noble Baroness, Lady David, makes my work quite redundant. All the same, it is not surprising to me, in spite of the good life that engineering has given to me,

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that schoolchildren have doubts about entering manufacturing industry with all its complexities. Can you remember the days when, as children, you went on school outings to a factory? The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, said some wise things about such outings in the December 1978 debate. Perhaps it was a trip to a factory, maybe one making turbo-generators, or to a steel mill, or to a shipyard. It was a daunting experience, even if the child was not sophisticated enough to realise that what he was seeing made had first to be conceived and designed.
Talking of such sophistication reminds me of an incident that happened nearly 42 years ago. On the last day of 1940 I took to No. 10 Downing Street the prototype of a new air raid shelter in the hope of getting Mr. Churchill's support. After an inspection and discussion Mr. Churchill approved the shelter and ordered that the necessary steel should be made available for the immediate construction of half a million. Then the party became social, and very pleasant it was. Perhaps to see that I did not get too elated at having secured almost 150,000 tons of precious steel for civil defence, Mr. Churchill amiably poked me in the ribs and said, pointing to the shelter, "It would not take much to design that; not like designing a warship", and of course I had to agree that that was so.
Though it saddens me, it does not surprise me that many young people are more attracted to service industries or professions, which seem easier and nearer to the life they have experienced in school, particularly when the financial rewards in manufacturing industry, to put it mildly, appear relatively poor. Another constraint, if that is the right way to describe it, was introduced by the Robbins plan, which gave every child who could profit from it the right to higher education in any subject of his choice, since it virtually denied industry those hardworking boys who had obtained their higher education in night schools while serving an industrial apprenticeship. Manufacturing industry has been ineffective in attracting them back.
Other constraints comparable in their effect have been introduced recently by the step taken to make the essential economies in higher education by a cut right across the board, so that some university departments of great interest to industry and attraction to the young, such as computer science, bear the same cuts as less demanding and less useful subjects. I never cease to be amazed at decisions that are taken time and again in high places without any regard to the country's economic needs.
I have mentioned only those constraints within a young person's comprehension. I have not credited him with a sophisticated knowledge of manufacturing industry's poor record when it comes to such activities as encouraging innovation. But he will be aware that engineering stands low in popular esteem. This was made clear by the Finniston Report, which has been published and debated in this House since the trilogy of debates in 1978.
The best way of removing the constraint of low popular esteem is, of course, to raise the standing of the engineering profession, and I hope your Lordships will not feel that I am digressing if I look at recent moves. First, starting at the top, we have the Fellow-
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ship of Engineering, established on the initiative and continued interest of the Senior Fellow, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. It came into being in February 1976. Putting it briefly, it sets out to do for engineering what the Royal Society has done for the past 300 years for natural knowledge. There are now 450 Fellows of Engineering; 60 are to be elected each year until the number reaches about 1,000. The object of the Fellowship is the pursuit, encouragement and maintenance of excellence in the whole field of engineering.
The Finniston Report—or, to give it its full title, the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Engineering Profession—came as something of a shock to the profession, but on the whole it has done good in making us examine ourselves. Out of that report has come the Engineering Council, about which the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, can speak with authority because she is a member. The council was established under Royal Charter, its primary objective being to encourage and improve the efficiency and competitiveness of British industry and commerce by advancing education in, and promoting the science of, engineering. Its policy statement, issued last September, has been well received. In particular, the council is committed to improve the level and quality of the recruitment into engineering.
There are other changes which may at first sight seem trivial, but they all help the standing of engineering. The Science Research Council, which for years supplied research funds for engineering as well as for pure science, has recently been renamed the Science and Engineering Research Council. We now have some chief engineers, and not chief scientists only, in our Government departments. I shall not be content, as I have said before, until this movement turns the Science Museum into what it really is, the Museum of Engineering, or, perhaps a livelier title, the Palace of Engineering.
In the educational field there is much to report. The noble Baroness, Lady David, dealt with one side; I hope to show the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, that his information is not accurate about at least one of the ancient universities. As I say, in the educational field there is much to report, and I shall confine my short account to Cambridge, only because I am still closest to it. Many other establishments could tell similar stories.
There is a Cambridge advanced course in production methods and management which dates back to my time, in 1966. It is an extremely demanding one-year post-graduate course, replacing much of the old traditional two-year graduate apprenticeship. It combines instruction by short courses with assignments in industry, an essential feature being that the students undertake projects in many different firms throughout the country. It is recognised by the engineering institutions as equivalent to at least one year of apprenticeship. Rather fewer than 40 students take the course each year, the number being limited only by the teaching resources that have been made available.
Cambridge, in common with several other universities, set up about 1979 a "Dainton" course—named after the then chairman of the University Grants Committee—and this course is a production engineering tripos. It consists of the first two years of

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the existing engineering tripos, which, it must not be forgotten, is followed by over 10 per cent. of all Cambridge undergraduates, as it has been the case for close on 100 years. The production engineering tripos follows these first two years by two further years specialising in production engineering subjects. A particular feature of the course is that it includes a considerable amount of time spent working on location in industry.
The admission of undergraduates to Cambridge is in the hands of the colleges, not of the university teaching departments. Anyone who has been concerned in recent years with seeking undergraduate admission to Cambridge will know that the 30 young people per annum on this production engineering course—quite apart from the 300 or more others on the engineering course—must be among the most highly qualified academically in the land. We can be assured, therefore, that some of our ablest young people have considered, and are preparing themselves for, a career in manufacturing industry.
For years, I was a prophet of doom, the doom of our manufacturing industry, a miserable role to play, particularly when one is proved right, even with some help from a worldwide recession. It gives me much pleasure, therefore, to end on a note of optimism.
7.49 p.m.
Lord Russell of Liverpool: My Lords, it is a great privilege for me to address your Lordships' House this evening. It is also a particular privilege to be able to make my maiden speech in a debate initiated by the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale. Time and again in the course of my researches for this debate I have heard of his efforts to forge new links between education and industry and of how much they were appreciated.
Only some four years ago, at the noble Viscount's behest, this House addressed itself to almost exactly the same problem as that with which we are dealing tonight. In the intervening period some progress has undoubtedly been made, but the problem remains with us. Its causes were described succinctly in the 1978 debate, and I shall not endeavour to repeat them all this evening. I feel that harping continuously on the causes, rather than looking towards solutions, can ultimately be self-defeating. One becomes gloomier each time one reiterates the litany of faults, to the point that one almost begins to believe that there is no way out. I shall endeavour to point out that there are solutions, workable solutions, which are being undertaken throughout the country today, and which are worthy of your Lordships' wholehearted support.
The question that lies at the heart of this debate can be simply expressed as, "Why does industry not appeal as a place to work?" The answer is composed of three principal elements—image, education and communication. All three elements interrelate; all are in fact part of a single response. There is a correlation between the image projected of the Stock Exchange and that projected by industry. The City is seen by the media, particularly by television, as peopled either with the harbingers of doom when the market is down, or with jet-set speculators and gamblers when the market is high. Few people reading newspapers or watching television news actually know what the City does.
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With industry we see the reverse. Everyone knows what they do. They go on strike, they lay people off. They disrupt. They fail to win orders; and anyway, the Japanese make better products. If City people are high-living gamblers, industrial managers are low-living football hooligans. And the problem is that these caricatures of each other are believed by the two separate sides. This is fact, whatever the nonsense factor. We cannot have a thriving economy unless the financial and industrial sectors of our economy each really gets to know about, and appreciate, what the other does. Mistrust does not attract talent; success does—but success relies on talent.
One cannot be too surprised that talent does not take to industry if that talent even partially believes in the image of industry that is disseminated by the media. It is a fact, my Lords, that the ablest young people of today are of the television generation—myself included—and television has a powerful influence on forming images of the world in which they have no experience. A recent attempt by independent television to dramatise daily life on a car production line featured a drunken, Trotskyite shop-steward. The series, called "On the Line", is now, quite rightly, off the line.
One is never going to be able to create a more sympathetic press for industry by coercion. However, if one is charitable enough to contend that the views of much of the media are based on ignorance rather than an informed indifference, then it is here that education and communication have crucial roles to play.
Where we have made advances in the last four years is in the field of education. Education for Industrial Society—a body financed by industry, under the auspices of, or in co-operation with, the Industrial Society—has created many new initiatives of positive value for all age groups. These range from the establishment of industrial societies in universities and polytechnics throughout the country, to a programme called the Challenge of Industry, for sixth formers—including special conferences for bright sixth form girls, who have particular problems in the field of self-confidence—a special programme for middle formers, called Preparing for Opportunity, right the way down to an imaginative series of books to be disseminated in primary schools.
The success of these programmes is underlined by the growing demand for them. The problem is that they require money—relatively small amounts on a consistent basis over and above that already subscribed by industry. Their development—indeed, the long-term development of our industry—depends on the stimulation of learning, not just by pamphlet and rhetoric, but by actual experience, such as that offered by the Industrial Society's Youth Training Scheme, or by Project Trident, or by the young Enterprise Scheme, already mentioned.
Here I have a slight reservation, even though I note the problems. When industry seconds personnel for projects involving schools, it tends to second those close to retirement. Would it not be a firmer commitment occasionally to second bright executives on the way up? The young, wise or not, tend to respond to relative youth more than to age. For reasons that I have never been quite clear about, education is usually thought of as being confined to children. It is fair to

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observe that many of the children who benefit under schemes such as the Trident Project actually have more work experience in industry than do the careers masters who advise them. This is as true at Eton as it is in local authority schools. I cannot believe that this is the way to attract talent. We should create equivalent schemes for careers masters so as to make those created for their pupils effective.
And so, my Lords, to the question of communication. Your Lordships will appreciate that maiden speeches are nerve-racking affairs, and terror is a great incentive to research. Without this, I doubt whether I should have stumbled across the initiatives that I have cited. I am deeply interested in this subject. But I did not know. Even some careers correspondents and advisers to whom I spoke were unaware of their extent. No scheme works unless the people know that it is there. There would appear to be a stunning lack of appreciation of the need for truly effective communication. Perhaps it is a lack of knowledge of how to communicate.
The Business Graduates Association, of which I am a member, late last year published a report which called for the establishment of two post-graduate chairs in communication. The association did that because the United Kingdom, unlike America, offers no such course. The call for the chairs met with an outstanding lack of response, which inclines me to believe that communication is as much a symbol of virility as is driving. They both tend to be skills that we know we do well, irrespective of our actual ability—sensitive areas where we know that we are beyond reproach. My Lords, we are not. For the most part we are beginners. We shall never attract talent to industry unless industry pays attention to its image, increases its efforts at education, and communicates its attractions, aims, and objectives persuasively. All three are two-way activities. Industry must make the effort. And we, my Lords, must also make the effort.
Your Lordships' House is in a unique position to be able to help effect change in the ways in which society views industry. Your Lordships are members of boards in every sector of industry, the City, local education authorities, training boards, television companies, publishing groups—the list is endless. The initiatives of organisations such as the Industrial Society deserve our fullest support. They are making a concerted effort to remedy this problem. We shall be deficient in our duty to this country if we do not do the same.
7.58 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, it is with more than the conventional expression of pleasure that I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, on a remarkably well researched and presented maiden speech. He has obviously taken a quite exceptional amount of trouble to put together a great deal of information, compressed into a mere nine minutes. It is a speech which will very much repay re-reading, and we must be very grateful to him. I think that we should be grateful, too, that he chose such a particularly appropriate debate in which to contribute. After all, he is able to demonstrate what our very ablest young are like, and with all respects to my colleagues, he is, I
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think, the only person in your Lordships' House tonight of whom that could be said. So it was very well chosen that he should join us on this occasion.
As a member of the council of the Industrial Society, which has had a bit of a night out for advertising, I should also like to thank the noble Lord in particular for the boost, the well-informed boost, that he gave to the work of the society. Needless to say I should like to second him very much in that. I hope—I am sure—that we shall hear from him a great deal, and if his speeches are as carefully prepared as was the one that we have heard tonight, we shall all look forward to them very greatly.
There can be little doubt, I think, that for generations now there has been an unholy alliance, no doubt totally unconscious, between the socialist Left and the socialite Right to create the impression that industry is neither ethically nor socially acceptable, with the result that a very great many very able young people have been brought up to believe that industry is not an area of activity to which they can devote their energies with a good conscience and real enthusiasm. Since the Industrial Society has been quoted so frequently, perhaps I may add just two more quotes. The first is from the director of the Industrial Society, who remarked some years ago (perhaps he is beginning to change his mind about this), in a moment of very understandable exasperation, "I need ten young people who want to redistribute wealth for one who wants to create it".
The second is from a member of the staff of the Industrial Society, who told me that on a visit to a teachers' training college to talk about industry she was met on the doorstep (yes, it was a she) by a member of the staff who said, "Oh, yes, you are the person who has come to con us, to con the students, to con the pupils, to go into industry". Those are both true stories, and it is a measure of what you are up against when you are trying to persuade the ablest in our schools to go forward to industry; because, of course, it starts in the schools, and that is where I should like to begin. I shall try not to repeat what has been said, but to underline, perhaps, what has been said in some other speeches.
I think it is high time we got down to the detail of what we are going to do about this, and, again, I should like to urge the Government to think about the development of what I call (for the want of a better name) work education in schools. I think I have said in your Lordships' House before that, after all, we have physical education, art education, and religious education, so why not work education? It would not be difficult to devise a comprehensive programme which would cover something of the basics of economics and the basics of technology but would involve planned exposure to industry: not just an occasional one-day visit, trooping around and hoping that there will be a good tea in the canteen at the end, but a planned period spent in places of work which can be used as an educational instrument in a way that practical work in industry is used as an educational instrument in all the best sandwich courses at the universities and polytechnics.
But it needs someone inside the school to have a major responsibility for doing this: not only to organise what I would call work education but also to

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help with the careers development and advice to the youngsters, which is still handicapped for a variety of reasons—a lack of resources, but also a lack of expertise in many cases among careers teachers because they are not given the chance or the opportunity to develop it. There is a need, further, for someone to influence the departmental heads in other subjects, so that when they are teaching their subjects they give a slant which shows the relevance of industry in the subject which they are teaching. It is perfectly possible to teach subjects like geography, history and, indeed, literature and, in a natural way, to bring in references to industry which begin to build up a picture of industry which is quite different from the picture that a great many people in schools get at the present time.
But for this you need proper training for the teachers who are going to do it. This is the moment to get started on this, and I do not mean a week in industry and a short course. I mean a very carefully planned course to break down the old conceptions about industry and to build up both knowledge and expertise, so that they can in fact take on this job of the development of work education in industry. With the unemployed teachers we have at the present time, surely it would be possible to embark on a scheme of this kind so that we really did have a drive to get a proper approach towards industry into our schools.
Of course, it is not only in the schools. There is the period that comes immediately after that, and there is the way in which you arrange the immediate post-compulsory school education period. Here, I should like to ask the noble Lord who is to reply what thinking the Government have done about the development of tertiary colleges—the colleges to which, between the ages of 16 and 18, youngsters can go, either full-time or part-time, either to work for A-levels (and this can include A-levels in traditional subjects) or as people who are already partially based in industry and who are going back to the tertiary colleges for an element of education, however this is organised.
The great advantage of organising A-level work in a tertiary college rather than in a school is that you begin to mix up at this very important stage youngsters who are studying conventional academic subjects and youngsters who have already got contacts with the world of work, and there could be movement across. Youngsters taking some of the academic subjects could also involve themselves more in the applied subjects; and by having the contact over a wider range that you would get in the tertiary colleges you would get the youngsters themselves beginning to understand from the people they meet the kind of opportunities there are in industry and what industry really is like at the present time. I think we must look at this two-year post-compulsory school age educational programme in very great depth. We have been moving around it; there have been hints about what we are going to do; there have been odd experiments here and there, but nobody has made up their mind. I would stress that if we are serious about getting our ablest young people moving into industry, then the tertiary college probably has a very considerable part to play.
Thirdly, I should like to reinforce what the noble Baroness, Lady David, has said about the absence—no, not total absence, but the great shortage
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in this country of anything which is equivalent to the technological university of Germany. I am sure we have suffered very greatly in this country from the fact that we have not had that development. We made a feeble start in the schools with secondary technical schools, and it fizzled out. We have a very few examples of the kind of thing which has contributed so much elsewhere. May I ask again, as the noble Baroness, Lady David, asked: Why was Aston cut back? Why was Salford cut back? Is it true, as we were told, that it was because the University Grants Committee cut back on the basis of the level of A-level grades of the students going into the colleges? Because if this is so it was bound to affect the technological students because you could get into those universities with a lower level of grade in your A-levels than you could in respect of the art subjects just because it was desirable to boost the technological subjects and to restrict the art students to those who were of very high ability.
If it is true—and it has been rumoured that it is true—that that is how it was done, surely it was a very grave mistake; and is it not still possible to reverse this and to give the boost to those technological institutions that we have, rather than to curtail them, and to encourage further development? Bath—and I declare an interest here because I have a connection with Bath—is surely an outstanding example of what can be done. It is singularly well chosen, in a city of such great beauty, that it should develop its university with a very strong technological bias. When you go to Bath and talk to people in Bath University, you realise that here is a model of a university with very high standards and with a great sense of what a university at its best can be, and yet with continually developing contacts with industry and with work in industry, and an understanding of the industrial problems. Can we not ask the Government to look again here and to see the folly of failing to invest in institutions of this kind?
It is not, of course, only the education side at which we have to look. As other speakers have said, industry itself needs to make certain changes if it is going to be attractive to those of high level ability. One is glad that industry has done as much as it has. The "Understanding British Industry" scheme put forward by the CBI and similar schemes are undoubtedly of value. But I wonder whether there is enough of a two-way flow. People are always being told through these schemes that the schools should understand industry. I wonder whether industry is doing quite enough to understand the schools. Secondment of teachers into industry is absolutely fine. Could there be a little more of secondment of people from industry into the schools? The schools protest—and, I suspect, with some justice—that people in industry, like all the rest of us, tend to think about schools in terms of what we knew when we were at school or of what one particular set of youngsters that we happen to know tell us about their experiences at school. This is a very unscientific way of forming one's judgment about what is going on. There have been great changes in the schools. If industry could arrange to second people more into the teaching section as well as vice-versa it surely would help.
The second point that I want to make about where industry could well be planning to do a good deal more

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is that I know—and your Lordships' House will think this is a King Charles' head with me—that nearly half the wits in this country are in female heads. We live on our wits, but you really would not think so if you looked at the extent to which industry still is failing to make use of female wits. Since 1975, there has been a dramatic change in the number of women going into the established professions. There is no corresponding change in their entry into industrial management. I know that there are special reasons for this, not least because of the recession which has made it very difficult to make promotions of this kind at a time when, alas! industry is cutting down rather than recruiting. But at the same time there is a need to take advantage of the ability of young women to an extent that has not been taken advantage of until now.
We have, of course, the brilliant exceptions. We are going to hear one of the brilliant exceptions in a few moments. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, will be the first to agree that a few special women engineers of high repute is no substitute for having a real inflow into industry of young women of high-level ability. Small things are being done. The Engineering Training Board sponsored and developed an extremely good programme, working together with industry and the universities, to get bright, young sixth-form girls to go for courses in the long vacation for a week or a fortnight—which is a collaboration between universities and industry—explaining what industry is all about. I had the privilege of attending one of these and was very struck with the way in which these young women were taking it in their stride—yes, they might be an electrical engineer but perhaps civil engineering was more exciting. They were discussing this as a perfectly normal kind of job to choose. But there are far too few of them and a real drive to get more of these young women is badly needed.
My Lords, the only other thing that I should like to say is on something where other speakers have made the point about the image of industry and about its risky nature. surely, we can encourage people to take risks and to find an exhilaration in taking risks rather than to seek security. I think it is folly for industry to go round pretending that it can offer security. It cannot. It can offer people the challenge of meeting risks and overcoming them.
Is there not one further thing that Government can do? We have talked about interchange between industry and education. Surely, we would benefit if Government would take into the Civil Service on an exchange basis far more people of high level out of industry and send their civil servants out into industry in exchange. A very little of this is done, but far too little. It is true, is it not, that there is still this feeling in the traditional Civil Service that, somehow, the chap out of industry, the engineer, is a person of a totally different order. I heard one who had suffered from it say—perhaps not fairly but I think he has a point—"They say that if they treated us as equals, we would become their masters". That, I suspect, is the fear that lies behind it.
But, my Lords, I am sure that France has gained enormously from the fact that it trains its leading managers and civil servants together; that they move in and out easily from the industrial world into the
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world of government and of administration and back again, with an understanding of each other's problems which must be of inestimable value. Cannot the Government take a lead here?—not in the very minor way in which it has been done in the past but seeing this as a major development so that bright young people can see, as the bright polytechnists in France see, the opportunity of a really exciting career, partly in industry and partly in the public service. There is much that Government can do.
8.15 p.m.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Rochdale for initiating this debate which is of considerable importance. I think it is sad that we had to take our place second in the queue and find ourselves speaking late with relatively few people about—the more especially because we had the privilege of hearing the brilliant maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. He really deserved more people to listen to him. Let us hope that he makes more speeches of that sort to us so that the House as a whole can have the benefit of hearing his splendid form of address.
My Lords, I will endeavour not to repeat what other people have said. A great deal has been said which is limiting what one can put. I must say that I saw—although I am not sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, saw this—that my noble friend's Unstarred Question related on the whole to graduates rather than to other people coming out of school; although I suppose that one could look at it both ways. I should mention perhaps that my own son graduated and got a history degree and is now working in productive manufacture on the production side as a management trainee. Therefore I have a little knowledge of his motivation and background, which governs a certain amount of what I have to say.
Perhaps, my Lords, we could look at one or two things which have not been mentioned. One is the vast change that has taken place in industry in the last 35 years or so. There are now far fewer medium-sized companies and, in some industries, there are no medium-sized companies in the old-fashioned style. There are very big companies, there are subsidiaries of very big companies and there are small companies. There is nothing very much in the middle. In the industry to which I am most close, the biscuit industry, in 1947 there were 450 separate firms. In 1977, there were 45. That is reflected in a lot of manufacturing industry. I should mention that the 45 factories now produce more biscuits per year than did the 450 some 30 years beforehand. This makes a tremendous difference to the numbers of opportunities that there are for young graduates to get into productive industry, because there is not the scope, there are not the same numbers of places for them as there were 35 years ago. That is a fact that we must live with. My Lords, in a sense, I take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who said that the best managers were trained as engineers. I would say that some of the best managers were trained as engineers. I would suggest to him that companies which concentrate on having only engineers to manage them—and this is the tendency these days—lose a certain breadth, particularly when the managers have grown up to board level, in the

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interests of the wider issues which people like my son, I trust, will provide to his company (if he stays with it) at a later date, he having been trained in history and having a wider outlook on things than most of the engineers that I know—although, of course, not the noble Lord, Lord Baker. So that is another disadvantage: the companies have narrowed their vision of whom they want to have as their management trainees. That is a third factor, a fact which is restricting the opportunities for some of the ablest young men to get into the companies in the first place.
I was recently talking to a senior manager of a company who himself went into productive industry from university with a history degree or something like that in either the late 1950s or the early 1960s. He was saying, quite independently of what we are talking about and quite independently of what I was saying about my son, that he, too, felt that he was the last of a generation of "generalists" going into front line management in manufacture. He thought that it was probably to the disadvantage of manufacturing industry that this should be coming about.
There is another fact and that is that with the passage of time there are more opportunities for people in the professions and there are more vacancies in the public service because the public service has become vast—thanks to the machinations of noble Lords opposite—over the past 30 years, and this has meant, therefore, that there are more opportunities for people in that area. That creams them away from productive industry on which—and I repeat what other noble Lords have said—this country absolutely depends. We cannot lose sight of the fact that productive industry is the base from which this country especially must depend.
One turns now—having missed out quite a lot that has already been said by other people—to the question of who is going to do anything about it. It seems, from my noble friend's Question, that he was expecting that the Government were going to take some kind of action, and it is quite clear that the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, also thinks that the Government should take some action. When we are talking about universities, I do not think that the Government really have anything very much to do at all. The less they meddle the better. The best people to improve on the situation are industry itself; industry widening its vision to see what it wants; industry taking in management trainees, and industry trying to get the best that it can find to solve its problems. As many people have said, a great deal can be done by the universities, realising that they have a function to perform in encouraging their undergraduates to go into productive industry and in portraying it as being a worthwhile and thoroughly practical thing to do, and also by showing industry as an area in which in some respects there is great opportunity. One can say that there is more opportunity there because as the less able people go into productive industry, graduates that do so stand a better chance because they will do better than the not so able people.
There are all sorts of areas in which the universities can help. The media do not help. I find the media very difficult these days. They are threshing around rather like stranded whales. They give me the impression of
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not quite knowing where they ought to put their emphasis. Whether they want to follow some vision that somebody has or whether they want to take a lead, I do not know. I do not want to waste too much time talking about the media but I think that they are a massive disappointment at the moment and they ought to do a lot of sharp looking at themselves to see how they can help the rest of us live our lives more satisfactorily.
Finally, I should like to mention what, as I see it, young men who do not go into productive industry most importantly are missing. I see them missing the chance to grasp on a relatively large scale the industrial relations problems which are the most intractable that face us in this country, and probably will continue to be so for some years to come. Also in that same context they lose the opportunity of seeing across the whole range of industry what all levels of workers have to undergo and how they mix in both with themselves and with the machines that they have to work. If they go into the professions or into the City they do not get a chance to do this; they experience it second-hand. Maybe the best that they get is what the media tells them—and your Lordships know what I think about that.
The most important aspect is a really good practical grasp of industrial relations. Every enterprising, intelligent young man and woman ought to want to be in there at some stage in his or her life to know what it is to be in negotiation with other people, trying to understand the problems of others as well as one's own. I see the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, nodding his head. He knows what I am saying because he has had to do it. This is vital to every young person. They really ought to pursue this. The more intelligent they are, the more they ought to do it and not isolate themselves in the plush buildings in the City. I get quite annoyed about that.
The next matter which is extremely important is this. It is no good being a merchant banker if you have not at some stage in your life achieved a grasp of the fundamental problems of manufacturing a product to meet a market. You must endeavour to achieve that before you start becoming a grandee, a management consultant or someone of that type. You must get your hands and feet wet doing the job. The intelligent people ought to want to do this and they should be encouraged by their universities to want to do it.
Then one needs to have a grasp of marketing a product, which is quite a problem all of its own. That is something which demands special talents that, with the greatest respect to the noble lord, Lord Baker, is not only in the hands of engineers. Finally, there is the grasp of knowledge about financing the manufactured product for the market. Most of the people who go into the professions do not ever come up against that, yet they have to pontificate about it.
Really, there are so many splendid opportunities that it seems sad that people should not be helped to understand that these are the roots on which this country so much depends. I hope that the universities will listen and will pass the messages on. Furthermore, I hope that the few companies that are left will, like the best ones, sell those things that I have been spelling out as an attraction to young people to come to their

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companies. They must say that it is not an easy job. These people are not looking for a soft job. As the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said, they are not concerned about pensions when they start; they need to be encouraged to join a company because the work is tough, not because it is easy. That is what the companies can tell them, and that is what the rather woolly-headed dons can tell them, too.
8.28 p.m.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, may I join those of your Lordships who have followed my noble friend Lord Russell of Liverpool in congratulating him most warmly on a fine maiden speech. As a comparatively new boy, and one of the youngest Members of your Lordships'House, I particularly welcome him. He is only the third Member of your Lordships' House to possess an MBA Degree, which makes him an expert in the subject of this debate. And when I use the word "expert" I am not using that old definition: "'X', an unknown quantity, and 'spurt', a drip under pressure".
I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, for having introduced today's Question on young people in industry. The noble Viscount first introduced this important topic before your Lordships' House four years ago and his perseverance in bringing it up again today is evidence—if a Cross-Bencher may borrow a slogan from the Conservative Party conference—of "The Resolute Approach". Indeed, a resolute approach is what is necessary. I need not add to what those noble Lords who have already spoken have said about the gravity of the problem.
Fortunately, there is a bright side. Like the noble Lord, Lord Russell, I should like to commend to the House the work of the Industrial Society, which has been plugging away to get a better understanding between young people and industry for as long as the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale. I refer in particular to two schemes promoted by the Industrial Society and funded by industry. First, there is the industrial experience scheme, whose object might almost have been written with this Motion in mind. INDEX, as the scheme is called, aims to foster closer links between education, industry and commerce by encouraging more able young people, regardless of their choice of career, to develop a greater understanding of the worth of industry and commerce.
Under the scheme, schools are asked to nominate their most talented and able sixth-formers for attachment to well-known large companies for six months between school and university, with no commitment on either side. Secondly, there is the Careers Research and Advisory Centre, which issues publications and runs courses to help students to find the right career. The CRAC also runs a programme called "Insight" in which young managers from different organisations help to run an intensive programme of business games, case studies and work simulations designed to help students find out what people in management do, what working in industry is like and what rewards and demands are involved.
However, it is not so easy to commend the vastly expensive and bureaucratic Youth Training Scheme administered by the Manpower Services Commission
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at the instigation of the Government. When the scheme was announced almost a year ago its cost was put at £ 1,000 million. Goodness knows what it costs now. I suspect that the scheme has one good purpose and two bad ones. The good purpose is helping young people to prepare for industrial life. The two bad purposes are to remove several hundred thousand young people artificially, expensively and temporarily from the employment statistics and to make it look as though the Government are doing something about unemployment.
Well-intentioned though the Youth Training Scheme is, the net cost in jobs destroyed in the general economy is greater than the number of jobs created by the scheme. The reason is that the cost of the scheme has to be raised from general taxation. The House of Lords Select Committee on Unemployment reports that the cost to the state of a young, single unemployed worker is at least £60 a week. Over and above this basic cost there is the expense of a training scheme which, in the opinion of many employers and many young people, is worse than useless.
For instance, one of the main elements of the scheme is "to ensure that basic skills like numeracy and literacy have been acquired". Only yesterday I spoke to one employer in industry who said that he was in the habit of giving spelling tests even to university graduates with supposedly good degrees. Many of them failed. He also gave a simple arithmetic test to every potential employee. The failure rate was 90 per cent.
If our young people are leaving school unable to read, write or add, there is no point whatever in throwing billions of pounds at fine-sounding but ineffective youth training schemes. The money would be better spent on improving the standards of education in the comprehensive schools. The problem is not that too little cash is being thrown at the unemployment question but that too much is being thrown around with too little thought. The Government are killing several industries every day by overtaxation. They must now seriously consider doing what they were elected to do and start cutting their own expenditure, not only in the field of youth training—however unfashionable that reduction may appear to be—but in other fields. The over-expenditure and under-productiveness of local, nationalised and central government destroys many more jobs than it creates. That is a root cause of unemployment.
The Government have failed, are failing and probably will continue to fail to face the question of the intolerable burden which over-taxation imposes upon industry because they realise that cutting unnecessary public spending means cutting unnecessary public sector jobs at a time when unemployment is already too high. The cost of employing workers wastefully in the public sector is substantially greater than the cost of employing them productively in the private sector, yet the private sector is forced by law to pay inordinately large rates and surcharges to subsidise the inefficient working practices of the state. The present astronomical unemployment is the inescapable result.

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There is one overriding reason why the rate of unemployment in Britain among young as well as older people is higher than in most other countries. There is one overriding reason why the manufacturing industries of this country are collapsing one by one. That reason is the wasteful and burdensome expense of our machinery of Government and the overtaxation of industries which that over-expenditure entails. It is only when the root cause of unemployment is tackled by an Administration with the vision and the courage to do what is right that the young and talented people of Britain will find the work for their hands which ought to be their birthright but is not.
8.37 p.m.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Viscount for raising this subject today and for the sentiments which he so inspiringly put forward in his Unstarred Question. I should also like to congratulate, as have all other noble Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, on a brilliant maiden speech. Perhaps he has answered the noble Viscount's Question. At least one young man is prepared to spend a good deal of time preparing a speech on this subject.
I am sure that all Members of the House want to see the industrial and economic upturn of our country. It will happen only if able young people choose to go into manufacturing industry. The right honourable Patrick Jenkin said recently:
"British manufacturing industry is still, and will go on being, one of the mainstays of the British economy. It accounts for one-quarter of our gross national product, provides one-quarter of our employment and accounts for three-quarters of our exports. It helps finance our schools, hospitals and the services provided by the local community".
In 1976, the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, in evidence to the House of Commons Select Commitee on Science and Technology referred to the contempt with which society at large so obviously regards those who create the wealth which everyone wants to spend. This is partly a matter of respect.
When I went down from university, I worked in industry, and I liked it. It was during the war. I was in an aircraft factory and we worked long hours. I still remember the coldness of that factory when the greater hangar doors were opened to let out one more aircraft to help to win the war. I still find it fascinating.
Recently I went back to British Aerospace. The factory I visited had belonged to Hawker Aircraft, the firm by which I was employed. I went to see the Harrier production line—the Harrier which worked so magnificently during the Falkland campaign. I heard from an engineer there how they had overcome the problem of controlling, both laterally and longitudinally, the performance of an aircraft with no forward speed. It had been overcome with comparatively little difficulty. Again I found that to be exciting.
Recently, I visited a ball-bearing firm in Chelmsford, where the general manager described to me the development of a silent ball-bearing that is very important in submarines. It was being developed by a team of experts. Again there rose the sense of excitement at being part of a team and achieving a
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breakthrough in developing a very important, though very tiny, item in submarines.
These things are exciting, and it is important that young people should know that. It does mean that the people who are doing them in industry must go into our schools and colleges and describe them with some enthusiasm. The younger those people are who go in the better it will be, because the nearer they will be to the young people they are trying to persuade. It does also need, as your Lordships will expect me to say, a positive programme of initiative by the local education authority. I want to speak from the point of view of my own county of Essex, which has done a great deal in this field because we believe strongly that it is important.
We have a central education/industry committee locally in all our areas. We bring together teachers, industrialists and councillors. Often they are very far apart to begin with in their point of view and in their suspicion of each others' point of view. But, as the meetings go by, they begin to realise where their common aims are and to work together. As they work together, that improves the opportunities for young people of going into industry and commerce and getting worthwhile jobs.
We also put our industrialists on governing bodies, where they can form very close local links and give the sort of work experience to which the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, referred—because they will know the rural science master and the craft, design and technology master and can arrange for the more interested young people to work in their local firms. We also second teachers into industry—inviting, as many noble Lords have said, the Industrial Society into our sixth forms, where young people can discuss the human problems in industry as well as the technological ones and how they might be solved.
We have close relations with the Science and Technology Regional Organisation—SATRO—and it provides prizes for projects year by year, which is encouraging schools to develop young people's aptitude for problem-solving in practical terms. Also, our curriculum ensures that all young people do maths until they are 16. Most do science and, of course, technology. As the noble Baroness, Lady David, mentioned, we take part with Trident and with UBI. These are all things that one has to keep at endlessly to change an attitude within schools and society. Many noble Lords have referred to local initiatives.
It will take a very long time for attitudes to change. As Abraham Lincoln said, we all have to keep pegging away. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, referred to my membership of the Engineering Council, and I do regard that as a great privilege. When the policy statement was launched recently, Sir Kenneth Corfield, our chairman, referred to the people concerned with producing the product, without whom the whole concept of the engineering dimension becomes meaningless. The most highly prized asset of any organisation, irrespective of its size or specialism, is its people—and not least its engineers at all levels. Sir Kenneth also underlined the council's commitment towards creating a cultural attitude within society which acknowledges the value, virtue and necessity of engineering as the basis on which the nation's health and prosperity depend. The council is aware of the

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urgent need to attract more of the best intellects into engineering.
One of the many initiatives that will come to fruition over the coming months is an Industrial Central Council for Admissions—an ICCA to parallel UCCA, which we hope will mean that industrialists, universities and polytechnics will get together to see that there is more industrial sponsorship and more provision of sandwich courses, which are so vital to young people in understanding what manufacturing industry is really about.
We come then to society itself. We all like the Arcadian and the rural and many think of industry as being dirty, tough and inhuman. It is, of course, only as human as the people in it. The other day I was walking in my village—and my village badly needs a by-pass, as I have said before—and a great juggernaut went driving through. As the Armstrong Report said, all of us instinctively fear juggernauts. But this one was driven carefully. It did not take the bollard with it, it did not mow down any old people or children, and it did not scrape the kerb. I was struck by the fact that that juggernaut was being driven by a skilled driver and a man of understanding. It is the man behind the machine that will always count. I went even further back in the life of that lorry to think of the designer who designed it with good brakes and with a reasonably quiet engine, and the engineers who maintained it to ensure that it was safe. This all comes back to the need to have inspired and able young people behind the machines and to realise that it is the people who count if the machines are not to rule our lives.
We are proud of the emancipation of women in this country. Women have the vote and the privilege of being Members of these Houses of Parliament. Equally important to women are the applications of electricity. Washing machines, electric lighting and central heating are all conveniences, and, had they not been invented by scientists and engineers and produced and marketed by manufacturing industry, women would still be scrubbing shirts and mangling them, trimming and filling oil lamps and humping heavy scuttles of coal. The products of manufacturing industry have freed women from drudgery and made their lives much pleasanter and more interesting.
I was for a number of years on Cambridge University's appointments board. We made a study of why second year undergraduates did not want to go into manufacturing industry. I remember particularly one young man saying that he did not want to go into industry because it would not use his originality, humanity and creativity to the full. I submit that manufacturing industry would use just those qualities to the full. The able young man or woman needs to have the courage to be so used. It is the men and women behind the machines who ensure that the machines are humane—whether they be lorries or computers. Young women often say, "I want to work with people". Manufacturing industry consists of people. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, will be interested to hear that last weekend I was discussing this with two young women technicians who are in middle management and who are controlling other people in manufacturing industry. They were talking to me with great enthusiasm about their
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work and about the personal and technological nature of that work—and they were obviously leading very satisfying lives.
It is up to us to do all that we can to remove the constraints which deter our ablest young people from taking up a career in manufacturing industry, whether it be as engineers or in the production and marketing process. They are all equally important. Their talents, their imagination, creativity and humanity will help to improve our environment, make industry more humane, contribute to our prosperity, and benefit society as a whole—and, I submit, give those same young people a very stimulating and rewarding career in their lifetimes and appeal to their undoubted idealism.
8.49 p.m.
Lord Brain: My Lords, first, I apologise for not putting my name to the list of speakers until the middle of this afternoon because I was not aware that I should be able to be present. I should like to join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, on his maiden speech. Having only recently taken that step myself, I remember how it feels. I felt that the noble Lord's sincerity and the great fluency with which he delivered his speech showed a great confidence of thought, and this gives the House great confidence in the noble Lord's future contributions to our debates. I would like to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, for introducing this topic and pick up two or three small points purely on the Question.
The ablest people are not just the first-class degrees, but also any graduate these days because all graduates have gone through. While the noble Baroness, Lady David, quoted first-class degrees going into industry, I think it is perhaps very often the good seconds that do not get there and should be encouraged to go there, because they are part of our ablest young people.
Baroness David: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, I did say that a great many second-class degree graduates had gone in, far more than firsts. The numbers were considerable; I have them and I will give them to the noble Lord later.
Lord Brain: My Lords, I was not wishing to criticise the noble Baroness's figures; I was rather trying to re-emphasise that even more second-class degree people should be encouraged to go into industry. I beg the noble Baroness's pardon. I also fear perhaps that many of the people who go into industry do not go sufficiently, as they should, into the manufacturing side of industry, but get diverted into other tasks; but that is in passing.
I would like to pick up briefly the comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, about the French educational system. Having worked in France, I felt that this balance between the cadres and industry and Government worked very successfully, and in particular they had adapted the cadres and the rest of the management of their industrial organisations much more efficiently than we appear to be using graduates in British industry. I think there is something British industry can learn in using the ablest people in the management of their companies.
I think British industry has not recognised anything like sufficiently the point made by the noble Lord,

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Lord Baker, about the change in the education system; they have lost these very good people who came in as apprentices, in the actual manufacturing side, and went to day release courses and won higher national diplomas and such qualifications, and they have not replaced those people by graduates in their recruitment pattern. In particular the small to mediun sized firms, where the management themselves have not degrees, having come up by this route, feel that people with degrees are academic and not practical enough. They are not looking for the right people; they are not giving the right image to the ablest people to go in and join them and use their ability.
Much has been said about university training and I will not repeat that, but I would perhaps join with the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, in saying that engineers are not the only people who can manage industry. Industry is now a team. Engineers have a very important part to play in it, but if their instructions to the people who have to make things and buy things are not written in a language which those people can understand perhaps an English graduate, for example, is a valuable member of a management team running manufacturing industry. I would wonder whether some of the people who heard Lord Baker's speech this evening might not feel that the views he was expressing may deter some of the ablest non-engineering graduates from entering industry. I put that forward as a point.
Much has been made about people seeing a greater challenge, a greater variation in jobs in merchant banking, the stock exchange and things like that. Industry does not make enough of the day-to-day challenge of what goes on in industry. It is seen to be pedestrian; there is a great fear that you will get stuck in Manchester, Chelmsford, the South-West and you will not move about the country, whereas if you are in a nice job in a merchant bank you will have admirable opportunities to go round the country. I do not think this is true. Industry should make it much clearer that there are a lot of very pleasant jobs in industry to be done round the country.
Finally, I think there is not enough made of the cultural gap. Many families have a tradition of going into the professions. Fewer families of the more recent graduates being brought up through the new education system have any tradition as to where their graduates go. There is a frightful feeling that, because the parents or the grandparents were working on the shop floor in industry, it might not be right for this highly educated generation to go into industry, trained as they are in perhaps the French language or history. I think that there is a need for people to realise that history is ! applicable to industry, that just because your father worked on the shop floor there is no reason why you should not begin your training on the shop floor and then go on to where your graduate and degree status justifies.
8.56 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, in answering this Unstarred Question, I, too, would like to echo the remarks of other noble Lords who have congratulated the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, on bringing up this subject. It is a vitally important one and one of
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which the Government are thoroughly apprised. He has explained his case in the most lucid and helpful way, certainly helpful to someone who is winding up a debate of this sort for the first time. It has been a very good debate. I have learned a great deal from it. It has been full of positive ideas, although I am afraid I do not think I shall follow the noble Baroness, Lady David, nor the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, down the road of the Government's economic policies tonight, if for no other reasons than time. Equally, it was an enormous pleasure to listen to the wonderful maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. He said that he thought it was a nerve-racking affair. I can assure him that from this side of the House he showed no signs of any nerves whatsoever. His speech was clearly extremely well thought out and brought with it a great deal of depth of thought. We will all, I know, look forward to reading what he said in due course, and I hope that many others outside your Lordships' House will do so. We will also all look forward to hearing him on this and other subjects again in due course.
As regards the substance of the debate, I think I can say at the outset that the Government largely go along with many of the views that have been expressed tonight. Several noble Lords have said that they did not want to go down the repetitive channel of talking about the historical and cultural aspects of it, but I fear that I am going to repeat some myself because I think that is a way in which we can put the whole thing into perspective. There is no doubt that industry has failed to attract to itself enough of our ablest young people. In large measure this is due to cultural attitudes which have grown up over the last century or more.
In 1850 we were the most powerful, influential and technologically advanced nation in the world; since then we have been in relative decline because of a lack of competitiveness by British industry in a number of areas. Several reasons have been suggested to explain this. Some people lay the blame on successive Governments, others on management, or on trade unions, or even on the loss of the Empire. But it seems to me that one main underlying cause lies in the historical development of our culture, which has influenced our attitudes to life and to the nature of employment, and which has had a significant impact on our educational system. It is a characteristic of this culture that those activities which relate directly to the business of profitably designing, manufacturing and marketing goods are generally regarded as less prestigious and less worthwhile than are many other activities, such as the pursuit of scholarship or academic knowledge, fundamental scientific research, certain professional occupations or even following the arts. We have allowed an anti-industrial, anti-commercial and anti-entrepreneurial attitude to develop in our society which is unique to the United Kingdom and is part of the so-called "British disease".
The Industrial Revolution had its roots in the North of England. It took place around 1704 to 1780 without the benefit of a formal education system, but there was at that time a general enthusiasm for experiment and innovation, based on "shrewd heads and clever fingers". What knowledge we had was applied to the solving of practical problems. Thus, we developed massive water-powered textile mills. Watt developed

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his rotary steam engine and entrepreneurs pioneered the smelting of iron with coal and steam. We made vast leaps in technology and productivity.
This upsurge carried on, as we know, until about 1850. And then, when we were at the height of our powers, we began to slip. As a nation we failed to realise that innovation was increasingly the result of systematic application of science to production, just at the time when our competitors were beginning to recognise that fact. In Germany, for example, university trained scientists worked in the new industries and there began a close collaboration between applied science in higher education and research in industry. In Britain we tended to concentrate on "pure" science and to regard "applied science" as somehow inferior. Many people still do. As a result we lagged behind particularly in those industries which depended most upon applied science, such as the chemical, including dyestuffs, and the electrical industries, both of which were beginning to grow rapidly.
In 1872 we had only 12 people reading for the natural sciences tripos at Cambridge, most of them intending to become doctors of medicine. yet by that time in Germany there were 11 technical universities and 20 other universities. That is a rather shaming fact. In the United States over 70 universities were flourishing, mainly related to local business and farming, and the educational traditions of postgraduate science organisations in Germany were quickly adopted in the United States.
On the other hand, our advances in education at that time were relatively slow. By 1851—the height of our power—only about one half of the children in England and Wales were getting any education and there was very little technical education at all. In the private sector, public schools developed with an emphasis on a liberal system of education dominated by classics, theology and a tradition of mathematics which was unconnected with science or applied science. This liberal education, however, was an excellent preparation for the professions or public service in the Empire or at home. Thus, at a time in which the economy of the country was becoming more and more dependent upon its ability to compete internationally, we were developing an educational system with values which elevated the status of service to the state and the professions and depressed the status of designing and manufacturing and of being involved in trade or commerce. It is not surprising, therefore, that it has been said that by the end of the 19th century we had the finest Civil Service in the world but at the expense of industry.
We still produce first-class people with brilliant creative ability who win international acclaim in the arts and science. We win a disproportionate share of Nobel Prizes. But we are still relatively slow in adapting to changing market conditions and in accepting and applying new technologies. The strong anti-enterprise culture which has developed discourages many of our brightest from taking risks or from going into industry and business. The business of taking risks was a point produced by several noble Lords this evening. So we need to restore that esteem for manufacture and commerce, for technological development and excellence. We need to ensure that
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young people acquire the knowledge and skills and understanding which will equip them to make a useful and satisfying contribution to the development of their country.
Our examination system dictates to a large extent the curriculum and subject matter in schools and is designed to fit university entry requirements and places a heavy emphasis on academic achievement. The pursuit of academic distinction, of scholarship and the importance of academic freedom, has been universally accepted as an end in itself. It is only in recent years that some people have begun to question whether this emphasis has been in the best long-term interests of the country and of pupils, and to recognise that there can be no freedom in education unless we are able to create the wealth to support it.
As our industries have had to face increasing international competition and as our technological expertise, which has been the foundation of our national wealth, has been overtaken in so many areas by new technologies, it has become increasingly apparent that our education system has not provided in quantity the people we need to develop and expand our wealth creating industries. However, whereas three or four years ago, we were still asking the question whether there should be any relevance in our school teaching to industrial development, the question commonly asked now is what can be done to improve the better mutual understanding between schools and industry? It is through this mutual understanding that more of our ablest young people will be challenged to consider what contribution they can make to industry. They need to see how industry, and manufacture in particular, contribute to national wealth and serve society in the provision of better living standards. They need to realise that products developed and marketed in Japan do not help improve these standards in the United Kingdom.
It may be helpful to go over some of the points that have been raised by noble Lords in the debate and endeavour to answer those I can. The noble Baroness, Lady David, asked particularly about figures for the placing of graduates, about university cuts and about science and engineering graduates being out of work. I am afraid I do not have the figures for her on graduates out of work, but I can say that in 1979 only 15 per cent. of United Kingdom graduates were engineers and 20 per cent. were scientists. Perhaps it would be helpful if I followed up these remarks with a letter, after having sought out the figures for which the noble Baroness asks.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, asked about university cuts. The University Grants Committee recommendations have effected a broad shift in emphasis towards engineering, applied science and technology. I shall read her remarks and if there are any further points that I can help her with I will, of course, endeavour to ascertain the details and let her have them.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but we have asked so often and received no reply why it was that the technology universities of Aston and Salford—let us be specific about them—suffered a disproportionately heavy share of the cuts. The Government have repeatedly

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said that this is the business of the University Grants Committee. I should like to echo the noble Baroness, Lady David, who said that it is our business, too. We should like to have an answer.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I have said what I can for the moment about the University Grants Committee. I shall look into the matter further and see if there is anything further that I can do to help the noble Baroness. The noble Baroness also asked about tertiary colleges. Some local education authorities have already developed tertiary colleges. Other authorities are giving increased attention to links between schools and further education institutions, recognising the value of the contribution that this can make towards bringing young people into touch with industry.
The noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, mentioned two schemes, INDEX and CRAC. They are, in fact, separate from the Industrial Society to which he referred, but they are, in conjunction with Trident, UBI and others, all strongly supported by the Department of Industry.
My noble friend Lady Platt of Writtle referred to SATRO. These, of course, are set up by the Department of Industry on a network throughout the United Kingdom. The noble Baroness referred, as did others, to the Engineering Council, which has, of course, an important part to play in raising the esteem of engineering and encouraging able young people to take up engineering careers. I am sure that my noble friend Lady Platt and her colleagues will continue to make a most positive contribution in this field.
The Government place great importance on the development of a mutual understanding between education and industry in order to break down the constraints which deter able young people. Within the Department of Industry is an Industry/Education Unit engaged in helping to change attitudes towards industry in co-operation with the education departments and others. This unit has as objectives encouraging a greater mutual understanding between industry and education, including the vital role of manufacture in wealth creation, and encouraging more of our young people, including the more able, to consider careers in industry and the subjects which may lead to such careers.
Let me give your Lordships a few examples of the activities in which this unit is involved. The annual Young Engineer for Britain competition demonstrates the creative design and technological aptitude of our young people. There is, of course, no doubt about these aptitudes, which are abundant among our young people. What this competition also does is to encourage the channelling of these abilities into projects which are responding to a need, which are cost-effective and which are commercially viable. A number of the projects submitted to the competition by young people at school have indeed been taken up commercially.
The EPIC Award (Education in Partnership with Industry and Commerce) encourages collaboration between university departments and individual companies. There is a need to examine the relevance of examination syllabuses to industrial applications, and the unit supports the development of case study
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and other curriculum materials in, for example, physics and chemistry, which approach the subjects in a problem-solving way, and which help young people to develop their skills in working in a team, making decisions and working to deadlines, as well as acquiring knowledge.
Teacher secondments into industry and vice versa are important since, as was pointed out by several speakers, many teachers will have gone from school, through college or university and back to school without experience of the industrial world. Increasingly, companies are helping to give this experience and are thereby also improving their understanding of education and the responsibilities that teachers have to their pupils.
The unit has recently supported two films, which are now available to schools with teachers' notes, encouraging young people to consider the challenges offered by entering a small business or, indeed, setting up on their own. There are already projects in schools where young people are setting up their own entrepreneuial activities, giving them a taste of the qualities required. The importance of introducing young people early to the technological world in which they are growing up is, of course, of particular significance. Your Lordships will know that the Government are helping schools to obtain microcomputer equipment. In the secondary sector, this has meant that more than 5,800 out of a total of some 6,000 secondary schools have acquired equipment in the last two years, and I believe that this is a world first in responding to the technological challenge, such as it is. A similar scheme was opened in October for primary schools, and it is already clear that the response to this is very enthusiastic. The important point is how this equipment is then used to give young people an awareness of the potential of technology, not just as an aid to learning—which it undoubtedly is—but as a wealth creator in terms of the creation of new products and processes and in increasing competitiveness and efficiency in almost all industrial sectors. The facility and enthusiasm with which young people use and experiment with technology must be encouraged in an open-ended, problem-solving way and not confined to any small corner of the curriculum.
These examples perhaps serve to illustrate some of the ways in which the constraints deterring young people from entering industry can be overcome if we are to achieve the markets we need in an increasingly competitive world. The enthusiasm with which young people respond certainly gives me great encouragement, but many more of these activities are needed to permeate the curriculum and correct the imbalances in attitudes which I described earlier, and which other noble Lords also described this evening. Vital though it is, it is not enough to encourage more of our most able people into industry. This must happen alongside a much more widespread understanding of industry's role and a more positive attitude among all young people. Those in industry as well as in education must redouble their efforts to make this happen.
I know that the Question which the noble Viscount tabled refers specifically to the more able, but we must not forget that about a quarter of young people leave school without any form of GCE, CSE or similar

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qualification. Industrial strength depends upon these young people being encouraged to make a positive contribution just as much as their peers who have a greater academic ability. The academic concentration of our present examination system does not always help these young people to make the most of their abilities. Yet, when given the opportunity to develop technical and practical skills, these young people will often forge quickly ahead.
The information technology centres which the Department of Industry and the Manpower Services Conmmission are setting up—some 150 of them all over the United Kingdom—give basic awareness and training to young school-leavers in computing, microelectronic applications and assembly, and modern office skills. Young people without academic qualifications respond enthusiastically to these courses because they are relevant to the modern world and help them to go after opportunities which would otherwise be closed to them.
Evidence so far shows that a high level of skill and competence can quickly be achieved by young people often seen as troublesome and low achievers while at school. This suggests that much greater effort is needed to provide this kind of experience at school. Technological developments give chances greater than ever before to offer young people the most relevant opportunities. For example, a micro-computer can help a slower learner work at a suitable pace just as much as it can help the faster pupil forge ahead.
A facility with the technology itself is also, of course, not confined to the academic pupil, but gives enormous opportunities for design and development work across ability age ranges. Kenneth Adams, a fellow of an education trust set up by Mr. Dimitri Comeno, summed up as follows:
"When people, for whatever reason, are unable to recognise the necessity, value and indeed the virtue of the principal activities by which their community earns its living, they face a major ethical dilemma which will be a cause of deep malaise among them. If you cannot assume, affirm and celebrate the value of the principal activities by which you and your community live, you cannot take a positive and hopeful view of your own future. You cannot say "Yes" to your own future if you do not say "Yes" to the activities on which that future depends".
The Government agree with that. We must all work to encourage young people to say "Yes" to their industrial future and then go on to say:
"And this is what I can do about it".
House adjourned at eighteen minutes past nine o'clock.

  EUROPEAN AND WESTMINSTER PARLIAMENTS: SEVERANCE PAYMENTS
  EUROPEAN AND WESTMINSTER PARLIAMENTS: SEVERANCE PAYMENTS
  GIBRALTAR: FUTURE OF DOCKYARD
  GIBRALTAR: FUTURE OF DOCKYARD